SEISMIC TO SIMULATION: INTEGRATED RESERVOIR MODEL FOR THE PATRICIA BALEEN GAS FIELD
Authors: Fink P. , Adamson M. , Jamal F. , Stark C. 
Published: August 2017

The Patricia and Baleen offshore gas fields are located in the northeastern part of the Gippsland Basin in southeast Australia. Although discovered by two exploration wells almost a quarter of a century ago, the two gas fields only recently have again become the focus of appraisal and subsequent development activity through OMV’s acquisition of Cultus in 1999.After the drilling of a successful appraisal well in late 1999, a high resolution 3D seismic survey was acquired in early 2000. No further data acquisition will be undertaken. Special emphasis was therefore put on maximising the value of the 3D dataset by integrating the PreSTM (Pre. Stack Time Migration) seismic and several Elastic Impedance attributes with all other available subsurface data prior to building a sophisticated stochastic reservoir model for simulation.This paper describes how the integration of leading edge seismic technology with unconventional geological modelling was used to overcome a number of major challenges in order to build a coherent static reservoir model and constrain resource uncertainty given the limited amount of wireline and core data:A large proportion of the gas fields is strongly affected by seismic tuning which would introduce significant uncertainties on GRV and GWC estimations from seismic, if not accounted for properly. Likewise all seismic and to a somewhat lesser extent basic inversion based attributes used for reservoir property determination are strongly affected by this geophysical artefact: These challenges (and seismic pitfalls) were met by inverting the conventional 3D seismic for Pand S- wave impedances and generating a set of Elastic Impedance Cubes, difference cubes and LRM Cubes (standing for the elastic constants Lambda (λ), Rho (ρ) and Mhu (μ)), defining petroacoustic properties of the reservoir rocks. These cubes were tested for mathematical dependency and used for the conditioning of the facies and porosity models.The glauconitic Gurnard reservoir contains a high fraction of conductive minerals and is almost completely bioturbated. Conventional saturation estimations based on wireline-logs and conventional sequence stratigraphic facies description did not deliver a reliable picture: Instead a facies model based on ichnofabric analysis was built and constrained with data available at the three well locations. Saturation height functions were applied separately for each facies type. The Rho-Lambda (ρλ) cube was used to condition facies distribution away from the wells.More specifically, the results presented in the paper are:Elastic Impedance inversion provided vertical seismic resolution in the order of 4 m to 10 m, thereby allowing a more accurate seismic estimation of GRV and the GWC. Lamesf Constants were extracted from seismic in order to classify lithology.A realistic facies model was built utilizing the Rho- Lambda (ρλ) cube combined with ichnofabric analysis tied to permeability and water saturation distributions.Elastic Impedance Difference cubes were successfully calculated to eliminate tuning even further and condition the stochastic porosity model.Connected volume maps were used to optimise the production well pathsThe GIIP upside volume has been upgraded compared to that based on an earlier simplistic geological reservoir model used for simulation. A more realistic P10/P90 reserves range is now supported by a number of deterministic and stochastic reservoir models.