Balakrishnan Kunjan, Witan Ardjakusumah, Kevin McDonald, Hannah Booth, Seda Rouxel (Cue Energy), and Asbjorn Norlund Christensen (Nordic Geoscience) show you how in the article “Maintaining line of sight in oil and gas exploration: A case study from Mahakam Delta, Indonesia” in the August 2020 issue of The Leading Edge.
The NU prospect, located in the Mahakam Hilir PSC on East Kalimantan, Borneo, is an example in which geologic chance of success (GCOS) predictions can change over time with increasing acquisition and availability of geophysical and geologic data and the studies done on them.
After a series of four wells was drilled in the PSC, which did not deliver commercial success, a change in approach was required to continue exploration.
This included the acquisition of:
- airborne gravity gradiometry data,
- initial trial pre-stack depth migration reprocessing of two key 1989 vintage 2D lines,
- acquisition of vintage well data from four Sambutan Field wells,
- acquisition of nine vintage 2D seismic lines over the field, and
- PSDM reprocessing of the nine 2D seismic lines.
All data were then integrated to build a new geologic model. As a result, the NU prospect GCOS progressively moved from less than 10% to nearly 40%.
You can read the whole article here (paywall): https://library.seg.org/doi/10.1190/tle39080558.1