Reservoir surveillance opportunities – A view of the potential in frontier and mature basins

Abstract

Shaun Dunn, global business manager for exploration and surveillance at Sonardyne, presents innovations in reservoir monitoring. Offshore exploration is heading into ever deeper water as many shallow reservoirs gradually move towards the end of their useful production lifecycles. The majority of geographical regions and sedimentary basins have now been explored with reducing volumes of untapped conventional resources available to be discovered, most notably for giant and super giant fields in excess of 500 Mmbbls (million barrels) reserves. There are a few exceptions in places such as the Arctic and the very deep water regions of the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic margin but accessing these reserves is fraught with technical uncertainty, risk and high cost-per-barrel extraction; these regions are increasingly commercially challenged and are currently rendered unappealing. Many deep water reservoirs are also geologically complex and require an increasing number of high-quality seismic surveys to provide information on the changing structure and, ultimately, to maximise productivity.