Locating High-productivity Areas of Tight Gas-sand Reservoirs Using LF Seismic Surveys

Birkelo, Brad; Goertz, A.; Cieślik, Konrad

doi:10.3997/2214-4609.20149032

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

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“…There was no notable precipitation and wind speeds remained below 3 m s −1 during more than 95 per cent of the acquisition period. The same data set has previously been investigated by Birkelo et al (2011).…”

Section: Data E X a M P L Ementioning

confidence: 99%

A statistical strategy for ambient seismic wavefield analysis: investigating correlations to a hydrocarbon reservoir

Riahi

Goertz

Birkelo³

et al. 2012

Geophysical Journal International

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Theoretical work and modelling studies have led to the hypothesis that the ambient seismic wave field on the surface can be affected by hydrocarbon reservoirs (>800 m depth). Several field studies have linked spectral features on the vertical component between 1 and 10 Hz to reservoir locations. However, such evidence has been criticized due to concerns that surface recordings typically contain a large amount of surface wave noise and correlations to hydrocarbon targets could be caused by non-hydrocarbon variables such as topography or weathering layer thickness. In this paper, we suggest a two-step analysis strategy to address such issues. First, spectral power is only averaged over time periods and frequencies where the distribution of polarization attributes show no obvious dominance of a few surface wave sources. An interferometric test reveals differences in the wave field composition between the filtered and unfiltered data. Second, the residual seismic power is correlated to hydrocarbon as well as non-hydrocarbon targets. The correlations are quantitatively compared using rank correlation and bootstrap confidence intervals. The method is illustrated on a passive seismic data set acquired with three-component, broad-band seismometers at the tight-gas Jonah field in Wyoming, USA. We find evidence that the wave field was dominated by a small number of surface sources in all of the data except for the quietest time periods in the low-frequency range 1.5-3.0 Hz. Seismic power within this subset significantly correlates to a published reservoir map but not with a digital elevation model and less so with an infrastructure density map. The investigated hypothesis can thus not be rejected with this data.

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Section: Data E X a M P L Ementioning

confidence: 99%

A statistical strategy for ambient seismic wavefield analysis: investigating correlations to a hydrocarbon reservoir

Riahi

Goertz

Birkelo³

et al. 2012

Geophysical Journal International

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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A low-frequency passive seismic array experiment over an onshore oil field in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

et al. 2013

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A low-frequency passive seismic experiment using an array of 49 3C broadband seismometers was conducted over an onshore oil field in the emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The aim of the experiment was to understand the characteristics and origins of the microseism (0.15–0.4 Hz) and microtremor (about 1–6 Hz) signals recorded, the latter having been reported as being a hydrocarbon indicator above several reservoirs in the region. The recorded array data were analyzed for their polarization, apparent velocities, and wavefront azimuths using various techniques, including spectral and time-frequency analyses, particle motion, H/V spectral ratios, and high-resolution frequency-wavenumber (f-k) analyses. In the frequency range of 0.15–0.4 Hz, the dominant feature observed consisted of double-frequency microseisms peaks generated by the nonlinear interactions of ocean waves with the shoreline along the coasts of the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Gulf. The f-k analyses confirmed that microtremor events in the frequency range of 2–3 Hz have an azimuth pointing toward a major oil pipeline and oil plant facilities to the west–southwest of the study area, as well as a motorway to the southeast. This would indicate that the microtremor events are probably caused by local sources, including the continuous movement of oil through the pipeline, the noise from oil plant facilities, as well as nearby traffic noise. This interpretation was confirmed by the polarization analysis performed on the data. The data also indicated that no clear correlation exists between the microtremor signal and local meteorological conditions. Although some body waves with an infinite apparent velocity generated by earthquakes were recorded, no other body waves that could have possibly been generated by hydrocarbon reservoirs were observed using the analyses techniques used in this study. Therefore, our results indicated that for the site under investigation, the microseism and the microtremor signals detected could not be related to the presence of hydrocarbon accumulations in the subsurface, but instead they may be attributed to local anthropogenic sources.

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Seismic attribute-based characterization of a tight gas sand reservoir in the Ordos Basin, China

Wang

Gao

Zhang

et al. 2014

SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts 2014

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Locating High-productivity Areas of Tight Gas-sand Reservoirs Using LF Seismic Surveys

Cited by 3 publications

References 3 publications

A statistical strategy for ambient seismic wavefield analysis: investigating correlations to a hydrocarbon reservoir

A statistical strategy for ambient seismic wavefield analysis: investigating correlations to a hydrocarbon reservoir

A low-frequency passive seismic array experiment over an onshore oil field in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Seismic attribute-based characterization of a tight gas sand reservoir in the Ordos Basin, China

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