Use of seismic stratigraphy for Minnelusa exploration, northeastern Wyoming

Abstract

While Minnelusa sands have yielded significant reserves in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, geologic complexities have made these sands an elusive target. This paper briefly describes the development of a technique which was used successfully in the exploration of Minnelusa sands. This tehnique can be applied to many stratigraphic exploration programs. Sonic logs, which are key logs in defining Minnelusa sands, in the C-H field were used to construct synthetic seismograms. These synthetics were then organized in cross‐section form to define whether a change in Minnelusa sands would yield an identifiable change on the synthetics. The “idealized” seismic response did show an obvious lateral change from upper sand to no upper sand conditions, and a pilot seismic line was shot using a Vibroseis® source. This line, which was shot through the C-H field, successfully showed the updip limits of the upper Minnelusa sands. A subsequent seismic program was acquired and other leads and prospects were identified, including prospects that were drilled and successfully completed in the Rozet area. However, a number of other wells conformed to Murphy’s law. In addition to standard processing techniques, high‐resolution processing and seismic attribute processing was done on some of the seismic data, yielding differing degrees of success. By closely coordinating geologic and geophysical principles, a useful stratigraphic‐seismic methodology was developed which has application to a wide variety of exploration problems. ™Trade and service mark of Conoco Inc.