Paper Summary
The North Sea is a mature hydrocarbon province, with many fields having passed their production peak, and some fields even abandoned. As part of an incentive programme to encourage new exploration and/or revitalization of existing or abandoned fields, the UK government has introduced a number of schemes in recent years, such as the ‘Fallow Field’ and ‘Promote license’ initiatives.
These initiatives have started to generate activity by attracting new entrants who can provide additional capital and fresh ideas to focus on exploration and appraisal.
In this way, proactive companies have been able to identify and exploit latent commercial prospects by tying-in to existing infrastructure, thereby rejuvenating both abandoned and hitherto overlooked fields.
Here we showcase Calgary-based Oilexco’s Brenda discovery, which could prove to be one of the largest finds in the North Sea in recent years. This discovery was reported earlier this year in the EAGE’s journal The First Break (Jones, et al, 2004).
The key to success in the evaluation of this asset has been the multi-disciplinary approach
taken to identify potential targets using the latest pre-processing technology, high resolution
velocity model building, and pre-stack imaging, combined with detailed calibrated reservoir
attribute analysis based on elastic impedance inversion.