Integrated Seismic Attributes as a Tool to Delineate the Oligocene Channels Architecture, Baltim Field, Offshore Central Nile Delta, Egypt

Abstract

The hydrocarbons in the Nile Delta area are produced from both clastic and non-clastic reservoirs, with ages ranging from the Early Cretaceous to the Plio-Pleistocene. The study area is situated in Baltim field offshore, Central Nile Delta, approximately 10 kilometers off the Egyptian coast (Fig. 1). The main producing reservoir in Baltim field is Abu Madi Formation (Miocene age) as there were many discoveries in the last decades resulting in most of the area had been considered as a brown field. Nowadays, the Oligocene section is considered as the hope for new hydrocarbon potentiality in the deep section (below Miocene). Among the drilled sedimentary sequence in the Nile Delta, Tineh Formation (Oligocene age) contains multiple levels of reservoir rocks with high-quality reservoirs including: Satis-1, Satis-3, Notus-1, Tineh-1, Atoll-1 & Salamat-1 (Fig. 2). This work's objective is to delineate the different channels of the Oligocene section in trial to add more reserves to the field. One of the main challenges for the exploration of these deep reservoirs is to delineate the reservoir geometry itself. A strong tool for improving bed thickness imaging and mapping, geologic discontinuities and channel delineation is the spectral decomposition technique providing more details than the conventional amplitude extractions. So, in this work, we applied the spectral decomposition tool to track the geometric dimensions of the Oligocene channels. RGB color blending performed from 10, 16, and 20 Hz represents the most significant geological features to get a better picture of the channel’s geometry. After determining the channel’s boundary by using the RGB blending, the channel geo-body was extracted. This technique helps in reducing the uncertainties of hydrocarbon exploration. Consequently to the integration between RMS amplitude maps and the channel geo-body that was extracted from the spectral decomposition, Oligocene channels became clearer and the boundaries well defined.