A Case Study in The Pennsylvanian Cleveland Sandstone on the Nemaha Ridge: Leveraging High Resolution 3D Seismic & Stratigraphic Analysis to Create the Conditions for a New Type of Resource Play in Reservoirs with Facies That are Poorly Organized/Ran
Abstract
Since drilling started in the 1920's along the Nemaha Ridge of north central Oklahoma and south central Kansas the Cleveland Fm. has traditionally been viewed as a shallow (2,500′–3,000′), thin, tight-oil tertiary objective on the way down to other more economic objectives. By integrating high-resolution 3D seismic and detailed sequence stratigraphic analysis, thicker, productive Cleveland reservoir fairways can be identified and drilled economically on the Nemaha Ridge. Cleveland depositional systems in the Nemaha Ridge area include river-dominated deltas and incised valleys, each with distinctive log and seismic characteristics. Deltaic reservoir successions occur in the upper two thirds of the Cleveland interval and are usually the best reservoirs. The deltaic reservoir units are composed of very fine to fine-grained sanding upward successions exhibiting dip-elongate behavior and rapid changes along strike. Optimal drilling locations are best identified by fine-scale correlations and seismic mapping, linked to subtle syn-sedimentary tectonics. High-resolution 3D seismic and multi-attribute analysis has proven a key tool in differentiating and predicting optimal reservoir trends in this new play and sets up an opportunity for focused horizontal exploitation that can be broadly applied to a number of other similar plays in old development areas.
AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90221 © 2015 Mid-Continent Section, Tulsa, Oklahoma, October 4-6, 2015