Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Figures Only Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Dong, Q. Articles by Xu, D. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Imaging complex structure with crosswell seismic in Jianghan oil field

Z-Seis, Houston, USA

Jeff Meyer

Fusion Petroleum Technologies, The Woodlands, Texas, USA

Yiwei Xu and Dilong Xu

The Bureau of Jianghan Oil Field, Guanghua, Hubei Province, China

Corresponding author: qdong123@yahoo.com

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

We conducted a crosswell seismic project in April 2002 in the Ma production area of Jianghan oil field in central Hubei Provice, P.R. China. This part of the Jianghan fault basin contains complex faults that dominate the reservoir zone, and they significantly affect flow paths and fluid distribution. Therefore, it is critical to understand the fault structure distribution in this area at the reservoir scale in order to develop and enhance production.

The Ma area has been surveyed with 3D surface seismic and most wells are extensively logged. This area is known to be a seismically poor data area due to its extremely slow weathering velocities, highly dipping formation, and complex structure. As a result, surface seismic techniques do not provide high resolution, and have limited ability to image the faults or to provide independent quantification of the various critical reservoir properties. On the other hand, log measurements deliver high-resolution sampling and fine precision, but only sample a very small volume of the reservoir. In this very complex reservoir, the wellbore information is an under-sampled representation because of the intrinsic geologic heterogeneity of the reservoir.

Crosswell seismic imaging, a relatively new technique for generating high-resolution images of the reservoir between wells, can directly image detailed reservoir features and provide high-resolution information in seismically difficult areas where surface imaging is challenged by highly dipping formations and complex faulted structures in the shallow formations above the reservoir interval.

The objective of the crosswell project in the Ma area was to generate both a velocity image and a reflection image to characterize the lithologic detail of the formation and the fault distribution in the reservoir interval. This information will be used by the geologist and reservoir engineer to adjust injection and to pinpoint infill-drilling locations. In this paper, we demonstrate that crosswell data . . . [Full Text of this Article]