Visualisation of geomorphological features and interpretation of the depositional system of the Brewster Member, Ichthys Field
Syed Iftikhar Arsalan A , Keiji Ichizawa A and Keiichi Furuya A BA INPEX, 100 St Georges Terrace, Perth WA 6000, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: keiichi.furuya@inpex.com.au
The APPEA Journal 57(1) 288-300 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ16209
Accepted: 9 March 2017 Published: 29 May 2017
Abstract
The Brewster Member of the Early Cretaceous Upper Vulcan Formation is one of the main reservoirs of the Ichthys Field. The Brewster reservoir is characterised as massive sandstone, 150–200 m thick, deposited in a deep marine environment. It has a high net sand-to-gross ratio (over 90%) throughout the field, but heterogeneous reservoir quality between the wells. Visualisation of various geo-morphological features from seismic data is critical for the better understanding of the reservoir. Due to thick overburden, frequency content of the seismic volume is limited at reservoir level. Since the reservoir primarily consists of high net sand-to-gross sandstone, and seismic data has limited resolution, it is difficult to identify the various depositional elements using conventional seismic amplitude interpretation. Seismic attribute visualisation techniques were applied to Ichthys 3D seismic and inverted P-impedance data, enabling identification of several geo-morphological features in this otherwise massive sandstone interval (e.g. feeder channel belt, channel-lobe complex, channel-lobe fringe). Core and log scale sedimentological interpretation were tied to the identified feature to understand the depositional architecture of the Brewster Member, which could lead to a better understanding of the distribution of reservoir properties.
Keywords: Browse Basin, depositional facies distribution, Ichthys gas-condensate field, seismic visualisation.
Syed Iftikhar Arsalan received his MSc Tech degree in Applied Geophysics in 2004 from the Indian School of Mines (Dhanbad), India. He has 12 years’ experience as a development geophysicist in different oil companies in India and Australia. He has worked expensively in the multi-Tcf plio-pleistocene deep water offshore gas development project on the east coast of India. In addition, his experience also includes explorations of onshore rift in Cambay basin, India and offshore basins like the Browse Basin on the North West Shelf, Australia. He has been working as a senior development geophysicist for INPEX, Perth since 2012. He is currently involved in the Ichthys field development project in INPEX. His core area of work and research interest is inversion study to facilitate reservoir characterisation and predict reservoir behaviour. He is an active member of SEG, ASEG and EAGE. |
Keiji Ichizawa received his BSc in 2008 from Niigata University, Japan and MSc in 2010 from Kyoto University, Japan. He joined INPEX in 2010 and worked on projects including the Bight Basin, Papuan Basin and Onshore Japan. In 2013, he joined INPEX Perth as a development geologist for the Ichthys Project to conduct geoscience studies including reservoir rock characterisation. He is a member of EAGE and the Japanese Association for Petroleum Technology. |
Keiichi Furuya received his BSc in 1993 and MSc in 1995 from Chiba University, Japan. He joined Japan Oil Development Co. Ltd in 1995 and thereafter worked on various 3D OBC seismic data acquisition, processing and interpretation projects for oil fields in offshore Abu Dhabi. Since 2012 he has been assigned as the manager of development geophysics at INPEX Perth for the Ichthys project. He is a member of SEG, EAGE, SEG Japan and Japan Association for Petroleum Technology. |
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