The Leading Edge; September 2002; v. 21; no. 9;
p. 911-912; DOI: 10.1190/1.1508946
© 2002 Society of Exploration Geophysicists
Resolving fault shadow problems in Irian Jaya (Indonesia) using prestack depth migration
Lawrence M. Gochioco,
Ika Ratna Novianti and
Ruben V. Pascual
GX Technology, Houston, Texas, U.S.
Corresponding author: lgochioco@gxt.com
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Irian Jaya, which forms the western half of the former Papua New Guinea island, is about 300 miles north of the Australian coastline. It is believed that the island has a good petroleum resource base, but it remains largely underexplored because of its very complex geology and limited accessible information. E&P activities in the last five years, however, suggest that companies are willing to take the risk. Recent structural and stratigraphic discoveries were made in the northwest corridor of the island, such as the giant Tangguh gas field in 1997 (
14 trillion cubic feet) in Bintuni Basin and a commercial oil field in Salawati Basin (Figure 1).
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Figure 1. The major Papuan Fold Belt and recent discoveries in Irian Jaya (Courtesy Kendrick and Hill).
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The island was formed from the major collision of the Indo-Australian, Eurasian, and Pacific plates that included the subsidiary Philippine Sea and Caroline plates. Geologic data from core samples and known petroleum discoveries in the eastern half of Papua New Guinea indicate a major fold belt. The Papuan Fold Belt and the Irian Jaya Fold Belt (IJFB) form an arched fairway across the entire island. IJFB consists of a thick Late Proterozoic-Tertiary sedimentary sequence that was deformed as a result of the Late Miocene-Recent arc collision with the northern Australian continental margin. However, the structural geology in the western IJFB is more complex than the Papuan Fold Belt, as evidenced by the unusual western high-mountain region.
The geophysical study is based on a grid of 2D seismic survey lines offshore western Irian Jaya. The prospect block has a large regional normal fault with a displacement of more than 600 m. The major . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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