Seismic reservoir characterization of Utica-Point Pleasant Shale with efforts at quantitative interpretation — A case study: Part 1

Abstract

The Utica Shale is one of the major source rocks in Ohio, and it extends across much of the eastern United States. Its organic richness, high content of calcite, and development of extensive organic porosity make it a perfect unconventional play, and it has gained the attention of the oil and gas industry. The primary target zone in the Utica Play includes the Utica Formation, Point Pleasant Formation, and Trenton Formation intervals. We attempt to identify the sweet spots within the Point Pleasant interval using 3D seismic data, available well data, and other relevant data. This has been done by way of organic richness and brittleness estimation in the rock intervals. The organic richness is determined by weight % of total organic carbon content, which is derived by transforming the inverted density volume. Core-log petrophysical modeling provides the necessary relationship for doing so. The brittleness is derived using rock-physics parameters such as the Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. Deterministic simultaneous inversion along with a neural network approach are followed to compute the rock-physics parameters and density using seismic data. The correlation of sweet spots identified based on the seismic data with the available production data emphasizes the significance of integration of seismic data with all other relevant data.