Advances in 4D Seismic and Geophysical Monitoring of Deepwater Fields

Abstract

Integrated surveillance is critical for producing oil and gas assets to understand reservoir dynamics and to improve field management. A key component of the surveillance is areal monitoring of subsurface changes (such as fluid movement, compaction, undrained fault blocks and bypassed hydrocarbon) using time lapse geophysical surveys such as 4D seismic. It is particularly important for deepwater fields where well control is sparse and development cost is high. In the past decade, various surveillance technologies have been demonstrated and deployed in Shell's deepwater portfolio of fields, which significantly increased the effectiveness of subsurface monitoring. In addition to production optimization and recovery improvement, great effort was also made towards frequent low-cost surveys that allows us to monitor rapid changes in our fields which is important for getting early information and monitoring injection well performance. In this paper, we will review the advances in these technologies with recent examples from Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and deepwater Brazil.