BEST OF AAPG: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO STAMPEDE FIELD DEVELOPMENT, DEEPWATER GULF OF MEXICO (Invited Presentation)

Stampede is a sub-salt middle Miocene age oil discovery in deep water Gulf of Mexico, which is currently in development phase. It is one of the deepest fields in the GOM (~30,000’ TVDSS) and lies in a 4-way structural closure segmented by faults. The field was discovered and appraised by four wells. Reservoir compartmentalization, stratigraphic complexity and fluid contact uncertainty are the three key issues facing Stampede field development. These issues were studied in detail by integrating structural and stratigraphic interpretation using state-of-the-art 3D dual coil seismic data, fault-seal analysis, pressure and fluid data from wells, all scales and types of the core datasets, and results from a multi-disciplinary tool, Geo2Flow, which helped in understanding compartmentalization, fluid contacts and framing the facies scheme. The products and knowledge from this integration effort were used in building the geological model. Seismic facies and attributes were used along with core data and regional analogues to determine depositional environments. Three geologic models (Low-Base-High) honoring the data and observations were built to capture all uncertainties and their ranges, which were used for flow simulation. Results led to an optimized base case plan which was used to design a 10-well drilling program to develop and produce from the field.

In this paper I would discuss this multi-disciplinary effort towards the field development plan and highlight the challenges and actions to address them. The work helped us gain a better understanding of (a) key faults influencing compartmentalization (b) proper representation of facies types and extent (c) reducing uncertainty in fluid contacts (d) their impact on flow simulation and field development.