GEOLOGIC MODELING OF LAMINATED TURBIDITE SANDS OF AN OFFSHORE OILFIELD

Economically productive sands in offshore turbidite reservoirs can be less than one foot thick. Identification of those sands can determine a well’s economic viability. The federal government estimates that 10 billion barrels of oil exist in the rocks of offshore California. This paper describes detailed geologic characterization and modeling of a portion of an offshore California oil field. This technique is based on a detailed workflow requiring resistivity-contrast generated borehole image logs as input. The result is a fine resolution model incorporating both geologic and petrophysical data to pinpoint potential thin bed net pay zones that could be overlooked using standard resolution wireline logs.