AVO-derived attributes to differentiate reservoir facies from non-reservoirs facies and fluid discrimination in Penobscot area, Nova Scotia

The discrimination of hydrocarbon (gas or oil) facies from non-hydrocarbon (wet sands) facies is an important goal in quantitative seismic interpretation and reservoir estimation. The differentiation of hydrocarbon facies from non-hydrocarbon in Mississauga Formation of early Cretaceous in Penobscot area is a difficult task due to smaller net pay thickness and shaly sand intervals. Based on seismic interpretation and wireline logs, five sand plays are identified in the middle of Mississauga Formation. Four sands have hydrocarbons while top of sand 5 represents hydrocarbon water transition zone. Among these four, the pay sand 4 is analyzed for hydrocarbon facies. Wireline logs and seismic data are used to derive various amplitude versus offset (AVO) based attributes such as: acoustic ( I P ) and shear ( I S ) impedances, Poisson ratio ( σ ) etc. Further, the combined attributes e.g., product of Lamé parameters ( μ , λ ) with density ( ρ ), their ratio ( λ / μ ), difference between bulk modulus ( K ) and shear modulus ( μ ), Δ μρ / μρ , Δ( λ / μ + 2)( λ / μ + 2) and the pore space modulus ( K P ) are also analyzed to find out the best attribute as a hydrocarbon facies discriminator from non-hydrocarbon facies in the shale imbedded pay sand 4 of Mississauga Formation. First, petrophysical parameters such as P and S wave impedances, Lamé’s parameters etc. are extracted from log data. Then, appropriate pairs of seismic attributes are crossplotted so that the hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon facies cluster together for quick identification and interpretation. Gamma ray index is crossplotted against spontaneous potential log to mark sand and shale facies. Fluid substitution modeling for various fluid types and saturation is also done which demonstrate that the cross-plots between different rock physics parameters can be used to distinguish between reservoir fluids. Our analysis reveals single P-wave based attributes are not sufficient to discriminate fluids thus the use of multi-attributes such as K P , λρ and K - μ is more effective to discriminate the hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon facies. The analysis of these cross-plots was done to map the reservoir sands and the hydrocarbon-water contact.