Delineating Overburden Anomalies through Dip-Constrained Tomography for Improved Reservoir Imaging in an Offshore Carbonate Field

Abstract

Abstract Overburden (shallow) anomalies such as channels, sink holes, or karst features pose challenges for seismic time imaging, resulting in an obscured image below the anomalies i.e. pull-ups or push-downs. These anomalies can propagate down to the reservoir masking the image and create structural uncertainties. These relatively small scale (< 1 – 2 km) overburden anomalies cannot be resolved with conventional depth imaging usually, based on migration velocity analysis and residual move out (RMO) minimization only. This paper proposes the application of dip-constrained tomography, in combination with RMO tomography to help resolve these shallow anomalies. Although the method has been widely used elsewhere e.g. in offshore Brazil and North Sea (Chen et al., 2012, Guillaume et al., 2013, Carotti et al., 2015 and Hollingworth et al., 2015), this is the first time it has been applied in a carbonate oilfield in offshore Abu Dhabi. An accurate velocity model is required for seismic depth imaging. The velocity model is optimized using a tomographic technique which is a non-linear optimization process with relevant constraints imposed. The data are migrated using an initial velocity model and common image gathers are obtained. RMO is defined in a cost function and non-linear tomography finds a velocity model minimizing the cost function. An additional structural constraint in the form of an offset-dependent dip constraint is introduced in the cost function for minimizing the misfit between the offset-dependent dip of the events and the expected dip. Dip-constrained tomography was able to obtain a high resolution velocity model in the overburden and provided a robust seismic image essentially free of pull-up and push-down effects in the reservoir. The structural uncertainty in the reservoir was subsequently reduced. Inverting the dip term together with RMO term can potentially correct image distortions e.g. pull-ups and push-downs and focus the image simultaneously. The refined subsurface image can help optimize the reservoir model with less structure uncertainty and can enhance the production profile by providing more flexibility in well design and planning. The methodology was applied on a pilot area which gave quite encouraging results and leads to extend the pre-stack depth imaging to a full-field application.