New insights into the North Taranaki Basin from New Zealand’s first broadband 3D survey*
Marjosbet Uzcategui 1 3 Malcolm Francis 2 Wai Tin Vincent Kong 1 Richard Patenall 1 Dominic Fell 1 Andrea Paxton 1 Tristan Allen 11 Schlumberger, Level 5, 256 St George’s Terrace, Perth, WA 6000, Australia.
2 Schlumberger, Schlumberger House, Buckingham Gate, Gatwick, West Sussex RH6 0NZ, UK.
3 Corresponding author. Email: msalazar6@slb.com
Exploration Geophysics 47(3) 210-218 https://doi.org/10.1071/EG15090
Submitted: 8 September 2015 Accepted: 18 March 2016 Published: 8 June 2016
Abstract
The Taranaki Basin is the only hydrocarbon producing basin in New Zealand. The North Taranaki Basin has widespread two-dimensional (2D) seismic coverage and numerous wells that have not encountered commercial accumulations. This is attributed to the structural complexity in the central graben and the absence of necessary information to help understand the basin’s evolution. An active petroleum system has been confirmed by hydrocarbon shows and non-commercial oil and gas discoveries (Karewa-1 and Kora-1). A broadband long offset three-dimensional (3D) seismic survey was acquired and processed by Schlumberger in 2013 to evaluate the hydrocarbon potential of the North Taranaki Basin. Innovative acquisition techniques were combined with advanced processing and imaging methods. Raypath distortions and depth uncertainty were significantly reduced by processing through tilted transverse isotropy (TTI) anisotropic Kirchhoff prestack depth migration with a geologically constrained velocity model. The survey provided the necessary information to understand the petroleum system and provide evidence for material hydrocarbon accumulations. In this investigation, we assessed the hydrocarbon potential of the North Taranaki Basin using the newly acquired data. 3D seismic interpretation and amplitude-versus-offset (AVO) analysis support the renewed potential of the basin and demonstrate effectiveness of these technologies that together can achieve encouraging results for hydrocarbon exploration.
Key words: 3D seismic, AVO, broadband, continuous line acquisition (CLA), depth imaging, interpretation, North Taranaki, technology.
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