AVO feasibility study for an Alberta Nisku reef prospect

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:542886

Lu, Han-Xing; Lines, L R

The detailed delineation of Nisku reefs represents a very important economic problem in the Canadian oil industry. In particular, it is important to distinguish between porous dolomite/limestone interfaces as opposed to shale/limestone interfaces as opposed to shale/limestone interfaces. Economic success is achieved by drilling into porous hydrocarbon-filled carbonates rather than into non-porous shales and limestones. These two different geological situations can have very similar responses on stacked data. However, according to Hilterman`s equation, the two cases should show definite differences in the amplitude vs. offset (AVO) responses due to Poisson`s ratio differences between shale and carbonates. While the AVO model differences between shale/limestone reflectors and porous dolomite/limestone reflectors are significant, there are often problems often center on noise difficulties. Range-limited stacks represent an easy an effective method for doing AVO analysis on noisy data despite possible problems with coarse sampling. The Nisku reflections from shale/limestone interfaces show larger amplitude increase with offset than on range-limited stacks for carbonate interfaces. This AVO behaviour may serve as a diagnostic tool for distinguishing reflectors in reefal environments.

• OSTI ID: 542886
• Report Number(s): CONF-951013--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
58 GEOSCIENCES
ALBERTA
CARBONATE ROCKS
EXPLORATION
PETROLEUM DEPOSITS
SEISMIC SURVEYS
STRATIGRAPHY