The Influence of Pore Pressure in Assessing Hydrocarbon Prospectivity - A Review

Abstract

Assessing the prospectivity of a basin or a play is a complex process that combines a multitude of geological, geomechanical and geophysical analyses with the aim to de-risk whether a particular basin/play should be explored further. However, it is possible to group the analyses under five simple terms; source, charge, reservoir, trap, and seal. Typical elements of this de-risking process would include assessing the presence and quality of the source rock or building a structural and stratigraphic model from seismic amplitude data. Other components would be modelling facies for instance. However, many of the other components that need to be understood as part of the assessment of prospectivity are related to the pressure regime within a play block in which a prospect is located. The focus of this paper is to review those aspects of hydrocarbon prospectivity that pertain to prospect identification, reservoir quality, migration, maturation, and retention that are influenced by pore pressure. Whilst understanding the reservoir forms a key focus within such studies of prospectivity, the pore pressure within the bounding shales is also important to produce reliable AVO models as well as to aid successful well planning, which is the more traditional use of pressure data.