Abstract
The Flemish Pass, offshore east coast Canada, has been an area of increased exploration activity since the discovery of Bay du Nord in 2013. The Flemish Pass is one of the core exploration areas within Statoil’s international portfolio. Additional recent discoveries have demonstrated further exploration success, while the award of new acreage during the 2015 license round provides further growth opportunities in the basin.
As always, the key to understanding the offshore subsurface is modern 3D seismic. This paper will demonstrate how the evaluation of seismic attributes contributes to the overall interpretation of the subsurface. We will show how:
- Coherency and spectral decomposition attributes give a detailed picture of the overburden for drilling risk analysis
- Advanced structural attributes like ‘Thinned Fault Likelihood” allow for a semi-automatic fault interpretation that enhances and accelerates the structural interpretation
- Automatic high vertical density horizon picking, e.g. Horizon Cube attributes, give an insight into seismic stratigraphy and the depositional history
- Chimney Cube attributes help the understanding of possible hydrocarbon migration paths and can be used to de-risk the exploration play.
- Seismic pre-stack inversion attributes improve the reservoir characterization including estimates of porosity and fluid fill.
Biography
Rainer Tonn is a ‘Leading Geophysicist’ with Statoil Canada Ltd. After finishing his Diploma and Doctorate at the University of Kiel in Germany he joined Wintershall in 1989. After four years of exploring for hydrocarbons in Germany and North Africa, Rainer moved to Canada and later to Argentina to work for Wintershall’s OPCOs. In 2000 he joined Pan Canadian, later EnCana, and explored for six years the Canadian East Coast. Before he started interpreting oilsands projects for Statoil in 2009, Rainer enjoyed three years of North Sea Exploration with Oilexco. In 2012 he moved to Norway, where he was responsible for Statoil’s global geophysical work processes. Since 2014 Rainer is located in St. John’s. Rainer’s special interest is the reduction of exploration/development risk with advanced seismic interpretation techniques.
