Detection of hydrocarbon- saturated reservoirs in a challenging geological setting using AVO attributes: A case study from Poseidon field, Offshore Northwest region of Australia

Abstract

Amplitude Versus Offset (AVO) methods relate seismic amplitude variations to subsurface pore fluid and lithology changes. Over the past decades, numerous AVO attributes have been extracted from seismic data and combined to detect seismic expressions associated with hydrocarbon-charged sediments. In this paper, we use an AVO attribute combination composed of gradient and scaled-Poisson reflectivity (SPR) to detect hydrocarbon expressions. Irrespective of sand-shale impedance contrast, the SPR and the gradient G produce negative anomalies for shale over gas saturated reservoir. We demonstrate that SPR-G product is a good alternative to the Intercept-Gradient product which works only for unconsolidated sands. The dataset used in this study is from Poseidon field, North Western Australia. The gas reservoirs belong to the Middle Jurassic-aged Plover Formation. The Plover Formation comprises sandstone, mudstone, and coal that deposited in a fluvial-deltaic environment. AVO analysis at a well location indicates the reservoirs belong to AVO Class II, which is characterized by small zero offset reflectivity and an anomalously large G. Due to the low impedance contrast between the reservoirs and the shale intervals, the I × G product failed to detect the fluid expressions of the reservoirs. The SPR × G product and SPR-G crossplot showed better fluid detection and lithology discrimination. Furthermore, the computation of the product SPR × G volume helped highlight the fluid response and spatial distribution of the reservoir units. New prospective undrilled areas could be identified using the SPR-G product.