First Published: GEO ExPro, December 2019
Abstract
Offshore Côte d’Ivoire is a well-established petroleum province, particularly in the eastern areas. Exploration is now moving into the more frontier region of the western Côte d’Ivoire Basin. To support these efforts PGS, in partnership with Petroci and Direction Générale des Hydrocarbures, has created a fully matched and merged contiguous dataset comprising full stack GeoStreamer 3D, conventional 3D and accompanying 2D across 23,000 km2 offshore Côte d’Ivoire. The PGS Côte d’Ivoire MegaSurvey now allows exploration and detailed regional evaluation for the first time, allowing plays to be effectively developed and risked.
Regional seismic data allows petroleum plays to be interpreted in full for the first time across the Côte d’Ivoire.
Exploration in Côte d’Ivoire has historically been focused on the central and eastern areas where numerous hydrocarbon discoveries have been made. These include a trend of gas discoveries in Upper Cretaceous stratigraphic traps (Foxtrot, Panthere and Marlin fields) and oil discoveries in Lower Cretaceous structural traps (Lion, Espoir, Acajou, Baobab and Kossipo fields). The Capitaine East-1X (Lukoil) and Paon (Anadarko) discoveries have proven the prospectivity of Upper Cretaceous oil-bearing stratigraphic plays in the deep water.
Figure: RMS amplitude extraction of Cretaceous turbidites (yellow/red) using the Base Cenozoic horizon (see foldout), illustrating the distribution of channels and fans across the transform area extending the play from the east (view to north).
These exploration successes have encouraged explorers to look further afield in tectonically complex areas of the western transform area controlled by the St.Paul’s Fracture Zone. The Morue-1X well (Anadarko and Total) and Saphir-1X well (Total) have shown a working hydrocarbon system in the previously underexplored western portion of the basin.
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