Geophysical assessment and hydrocarbon potential of the Cenomanian Bahariya reservoir in the Abu Gharadig Field, Western Desert, Egypt

Abstract

In this study, the sandstones of the Bahariya Formation in the Abu Gharadig Field, which is a promising oil reservoir in the Abu Gharadig Basin, Western Desert, Egypt, were assessed. The wireline logs from three wells (Abu Gharadig-2, Abu Gharadig-6, and Abu Gharadig-15) were studied using seismic and petrophysical analyses. Based on seismic data, the study area contains an ENE–WSW anticlinal structure, which is divided by a set of NW–SE normal faults, reflecting the effect of Late Cretaceous dextral wrench tectonics on the northern Western Desert. The visual analysis of the well logs reveals a potential zone within well Abu Gharadig-2 located between depths of 10,551 and 10,568 ft (zone A). In contrast, potential zones were detected between depths of 11,593–11,623 ft (zone B) and 11,652–11,673 ft (zone C) in well Abu Gharadig-6. In well Abu Gharadig-15, potential zones are located between depths of 11,244–11251ft (zone D) and 11,459–11,467 ft (zone E). The quantitative evaluation shows that the intervals B and C in well AG-6 are the zones with the highest oil-bearing potential in the Abu Gharadig Field in terms of the reservoir quality. They exhibit the lowest shale volume (0.06–0.09), highest effective porosity (0.13), minimum water saturation (0.11–0.16), lowest bulk volume of water (0.01–0.02), high absolute permeability (10.92–13.93 mD), high relative oil permeability (~ 1.0), and low water cut (~ 0). The apex of the mapped fold represents that the topmost Bahariya Formation in the Abu Gharadig Field for which the drilling of additional wells close to well AG-6 is highly recommended.

Petroleum generation modelling of theMiddle‐LateCretaceous sediments in the Abu Gharadig Field, Northwestern Desert, Egypt

“…The AG Basin is in the unstable shelf part of Egypt (Said, 1990;Sarhan, 2021). It is an asymmetrical E-W trending intra-cratonic basin F I G U R E 3 A structural cross-section through the AG Field (after El Gazzar et al, 2016) (EGPC, 1992) that was formed due to a rifting phase since the Middle Jurassic and the opening of the proto-Mediterranean Tethyan basin started after the disintegration of the Pangaea supercontinent (Dolson et al, 2000).…”

“…Hydrocarbon exploration in the northern African platform is frequently associated with the occurrence of marine basins, particularly where thickness of sediments is high (Mansour, Tahoun, Gentzis & Elewa, 2019). Egypt exhibits its thickest sedimentary cover in Abu Gharadig (AG) Basin with a total thickness reaches 8–9 km (Hantar, 1990; Sarhan, 2021). AG Basin is one of numerous prolific basins distributed in northern Western Desert of Egypt (Figure 1a).…”

Seismic attributes and spectral decomposition-based inverted porosity-constrained simulations for appraisal of shallow-marine lower-Cretaceous sequences of Miano gas field, Southern Pakistan

“…A group of researchers has recently applied various geophysical reservoir mapping and imaging techniques to the diversity of structural and stratigraphic traps [ 18 , [37] , [38] , [39] , [40] , [41] , [42] , [43] ]. They have relied on bandlimited seismic attributes and innovative reservoir geophysical modelling techniques.…”

Well Logging Reconstruction Based on a Temporal Convolutional Network and Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit Network with Attention Mechanism Optimized by Improved Sand Cat Swarm Optimization

“…Logging is a technique for determining the characteristics of underground rocks and fluids by means of sensors in boreholes [1][2][3][4]. When the logging instrument fails or the well wall is destroyed, the logging data in some sections will be missing.…”