Gas Reservoir Solutions

4C seismic survey clarifies the

understanding of UNOCAL’s Attaka Field,
East Kalimantan
Over the past few years UNOCAL Indonesia has made a major effort to decipher the
structural faults and traps affecting the crest of its prolific Attaka Field offshore East
Kalimantan. The company believes that millions of barrels of oil are locked in this
part of the reservoir. However, conventional, seismic-exploration efforts have been
severely hampered by a major gas chimney that distorts compressional (P-wave)
wave data to the point where it is virtually useless.
In a pioneering attempt to ‘see through’ this gas chimney, UNOCAL asked
Schlumberger to help it carry out the world’s first simultaneous 4-component (4C),
3D ocean-bottom cable (OBC) seismic survey. By linking features identified in the
shear-wave data to those seen on 3D borehole vertical seismic profile (VSP) data
and sonic logs, UNOCAL has gained a new and accurate insight into the reservoir
that has led to a dramatic alteration to its planned drilling programme.
Instead of drilling tens of pilot wells, costing $1 million each, UNOCAL now aims to
use the 4C-OBC data to land horizontal wells directly into new targets and, at the
same time, reduce its drilling risk which currently runs at $1.5 million per well.

or the past 25 years, the Attaka Field
F (Figure 1) has consistently produced oil
at a rate of 25,000 BOPD and major
quantities of gas. Most of the current
production is derived from numerous wells
that tap relatively shallow sandstones up to
40 ft thick, lying on the flanks of the field. As
the field matures, development costs have
increased as UNOCAL has endeavored to
understand fault displacement patterns and
locate new stratigraphic traps. In the crest of
the field, which is thought to contain major
untapped reserves, this search has been
hindered by a major gas chimney that
severely distorts compressional (P-wave)
exploration data (Figure 2).
UNOCAL
Philip F. Johnston
In these situations, shear-wave (S-wave)
measurements, that are only affected by the
rock matrix and not the presence of gas or
pore fluids, can shed new light on the
understanding of a reservoir (see box
‘Searching with shear waves’). Recent
developments in seismic acquisition and
recording technology allow S-wave data to
be recorded offshore. They have proved to
be relatively successful in the North Sea and
the Gulf of Mexico. UNOCAL realized that
Attaka offered the potential to take this new
science one step further. By simultaneously
acquiring 3D-borehole-seismic and
four-component (4C), 3D ocean-bottom
cable (OBC) shear-wave data it could
achieve a degree of well control and check
the validity of the S-wave results.

SCHLUMBERGER
Bill Borland

2 Improved Recovery and Production – Gas Reservoir Solutions

 Figure 1: Attaka
Bontang
B field location.

±12 kms
Attaka field
Santan Terminal
±26
km
s

A Badak
ms
1k
±6

B
Samarinda
Tunu

Sanga-
an
ap

Sanga
p
lik

Gas
Ba

Pamaguan
m

Sisi
ro
sf
km

Mutiara
48
±1

A
Handil
Samboja
Nusi

Nangka Bekapai
k
loc
gb
run
ma
Pe

Peciko

Samarinda Figure 2: Extracted 2D line from conventional 3D data

showing the distorting effect of the gas chimney.

UNOCAL selected a 4 km2 survey area

that incorporated a suitably located well
drilled from an existing platform
2 km 2 km (Figure 3). A painstaking five-month
Survey vessel planning process was undertaken by
Schlumberger and UNOCAL to ensure that
Geco My
the proposed week-long survey could be
Reef carried out without a hitch in this highly
congested offshore environment. The
planners needed t account for numerous
50m sea bad obstacles, including anchor lines
deep Geco Southern Surveyor
and reefs and had to coordinate their
Reef activities with movements of supply
Cables vessels. Both parties agree that this careful
planning proved to be a key element in the
overall success of the project.

Figure 3: The Attaka survey area and location

photograph

Improved Recovery and Production – Gas Reservoir Solutions 3

 PP By mid-1998, the survey procedure and
timing had been agreed between all the
offshore operators. An array of five,
magnetically clamped, three-component
PSV
sensors were located in the borehole. At the
same time, a 3-km, 4C-OBC Nessie 4 cable,
with 25-m groups, was laid on the seabed.
These cables incorporate three-component
geophones that record the S-wave data and
a hydrophone to measure the separation of
the up and downgoing P-wave data (hence
four-component) (see Figures 4, 5 and 6).

Source

NRY Wireline
TRY (armored
cable)

Cartridge

Bridle cable
Z

Y
HMN
X HMX

50 ft
Triaxial
sensor
packages
Fox-trot
satellite
platform Southern
Suveyor

Geco
My

4C Ocean
bottom cable Figure 4: Conventional
compressional seismic
uses PP reflections,
while converted wave
seismic uses PS
reflections (top).
Well FS-11 Array Seismic imager The three-component
Well Seismic Array
tool (middle).
Simultaneous survey
setup for the Attaka
field OBC/ASI 3D
survey (bottom).

4 Improved Recovery and Production – Gas Reservoir Solutions

 Twenty-one source lines, each 5 km in
5 km line
length, with 25 m interval, and spaced 200 m OBC-ASI survey
25 m • The boat shot total 200 shot/line
apart were then shot normal to the OBC. Boat • ASI record every other shot = 100 shot/line
When the shot lines were complete the OBC • Total recorded shot/receiver line = 2100 shots
• For 5 receiver lines = 10500 shots
was moved 400 m and the same source lines
were re-shot. During the retrieval and
re-deployment of the OBC, the downhole Well trajectory

array was also moved to a new interval in ASI station depth (ft)
the well. This procedure continued until five OBC Walkaway
2 km rec lines 4100 4100
OBC positions has been recorded. 21 lines 3850 3850
The positioning work for the Attaka OBC 2450 3600
survey had to be carried out in two stages. 2200 3350
1950 3100
The first phase occurred when the survey 2850
recording vessel, the GECO Southern 2 km walkaway
2600
2350
Surveyor, deployed the cable onto the shot every 250'
2100
seabed. Ultrasonic transponders were 1850
placed at the front end of each OBC to ASI- Walkaway survey 1600
• The boat shot a 2.5km line for 1350
ensure they were laid within acceptable every ASI station
• Repeated until seismic signal is bad 1100
offset tolerances. This was a tricky (~1000 ft)
operation as sea-bed obstructions, reefs and
anchor cables had to be negotiated and the
work performed with the agreement of
other offshore supply and support vessels. Figure 5: OBC and walkaway plan for the Attaka field survey.
The second-stage positioning was carried
out while the GECO My source vessel was
shooting the line. The survey involved 9,982,000
towing air guns along the survey line in the
normal way. The vessel was fitted with
acoustic transceivers that ranged down to 9,981,000
transponders on the cable. This allowed the
geophysicists to estimate the positions of all
the receiver groups. 9,980,000

Timing – the critical element

of the survey 9,979,000

The simultaneous OBC and downhole

seismic acquisition program necessitated 9,978,000
synchronized information sharing between
the source boat, recording vessel and
logging unit on the platform. Navigation 9,977,000
data had to be acquired on the source boat,
processed on the recording boat and then
sent back to the source boat where it was 9,976,000
used to predict the next shot position.
Navigational information on the position of
the source during firing was also 9,975,000 all shots
transmitted to the recording boat for 1 within 5000'
computation and then sent to the logging 2 within 5000'
unit. A trigger pulse was sent from the 9,974,000 3 within 5000'
source boat to the logging unit to initiate 4 within 5000'
downhole recording prior to the air-gun
5 within 5000'
release. In addition, the reference time of
9,973,000
the air-gun shot was sent from the source 568,000 569,000 570,000 571,000 572,000 573,000 574,000 575,000 576,000
boat to the recording vessel and on to the
logging unit. Figure 6: Actual simultaneous OBC/ASI lines shot and probable
maximum useable shot for conventional VSP processing.

Improved Recovery and Production – Gas Reservoir Solutions 5

 The borehole acquisition was run in
‘slave mode’ with the OBC recordings as
master to ensure that the borehole
operation would not interfere with or delay
the surface acquisition. A mini-3D
walkaway vertical seismic profile (VSP)
survey was also recorded on completion of
the simultaneous acquisition.
Just over 500 km of 4C-OBC data was shot
during the survey. An additional 6 km of 2D
line was shot to link the 3D data volume
with the existing conventional 3D volume
recorded outside the gas-affected area.

Perfecting the processing

Figure 7: The final 3D P-velocity model is represented by two vertical sections
At its Gatwick processing center, and an iso-velocity surface, corresponding to a velocity of 2200 m/s.
Schlumberger used parametric inversion
techniques to extract P- and
S-wave velocities from the walkaway 3C Initial model Updated model
data. These are being used in the migration 800 800 800
of the walkaway data as well as in the 900 900 900
common conversion point mapping of the
1000 1000 1000
OBC data. The lack of S-wave velocities in
the near surface, above the topmost level, 1100 1100 1100
Depth(m)

makes it difficult to develop a tie-in 1200 1200 1200

between the surface data and the key well-
control and associated, known fault data.
This is due to unexpectedly low shear
velocities (less than 100 m/sec) in the
shallow rocks. As a result, the initial velocity
model proved to be inadequate. After a
series of fresh attempts, a new iterative
velocity analysis model was developed,
based on the sonic logging information*.
(Figure 7) note: this is Figure 5 from
Technical paper). The final 3D P-velocity
model is represented by two vertical
sections and an isovelocity surface,
corresponding to a velocity of 2200 m/sec.
A 3D depth migration of the VSP data was
then undertaken using this model. The result
of this 3D migration is shown in (Figure 8)
alongside the original ‘initial’ model. There is
a dramatic improvement in the coherency
and resolution of all primary events. Faults
that were previously wrongly positioned or
even unidentified are now clearly visible and
consistent with the known regional geology.
UNOCAL will now use the model data to
plan future horizontal well placement. The
company aims to drill ‘tens of wells’ in the
coming years into this crestal area and so
the results of this work are critical to
UNOCAL’s economics. Those involved with
this pioneering project feel that the
technique, once proven, will have
applications across the region.
1300 1300 1300
1400 1400 1400
1500 1500 1500
1600 1600 1600
Figure 8: 3D pre-stack depth migration results using the initial
model (left) and the final tomographic model (right).
This project has highlighted the
importance of understanding the effects and
sensitivities introduced by extremely small
S-wave velocities in shallow sediments.
There is a huge amount of two-way-time
introduced into this data by these shallow
sediments and others working in modern
delta environments should take this into
consideration. The project team
recommends that anyone attempting a
similar survey should record VSP data as
shallow as possible to catch details of
velocity variations and to provide a correct
reference for the absolute P-S two-way-
time. Similarly, a high quality continuous
shear log will also help to determine the
shear velocity model in these highly variable
shallow sands.

6 Improved Recovery and Production – Gas Reservoir Solutions

Searching with
shear waves
Currently available and emerging
techniques for 3D seismic data acquisition
include:
• conventional towed streamer
• conventional ocean bottom cable (OBC)
• multicomponent seabed data acquisition
• seabed data acquisition using permanently
installed receiver arrays.
The introduction of multistreamer
operations has made conventional marine
data acquisition a very cost-effective
technique, particularly for large exploration
surveys. Also, developments in source,
streamer and navigation technology over
the past 15 years have dramatically
improved 3D seismic data quality.
Compared with conventional marine
acquisition, and independently of the use of
multicomponent sensors (Figure 9), seabed
data acquisition offers the following generic
advantages:
• receiver locations remain constant during
shooting: this eliminates any data
smearing due to varying and uncertain
receiver positions, and also effectively
eliminates the need for infill shooting
• acquisition geometry flexibility: facilities
can more easily be undershot, and true 3D
geometries can be designed that will
ensure target illumination from all
directions
• potential for higher bandwidth: moving
the receivers down to the seabed in deep
water, or the combined use of hydrophone
and geophone data, essentially eliminates
wavelet smearing due to the receiver
surface ghost
• less ambient noise: generally the acoustic
noise level is lower at the seabed than at
the surface.
Furthermore, the use of permanently
installed seabed receiver arrays will provide
certainty in the repeatability of the receiver
positions from survey to survey (Figure 10).
The use of wells as calibration points is
also critical to the success of seismic
reservoir monitoring. Well calibration is
needed to establish a relationship between
reservoir parameters and the observable
seismic parameters, and to constrain the
NESSIE 4C MultiWave Array system
Multiplicity of each component in each group
(group interval 25 m)
Sensors inside cable
Heavier cable than OBC
Designed for 4C vector response
Observation: geophone better than hydrophone
Conventional OBC
One of each component in each group
(group interval 50 m)
Sensors strapped to outside of cable
Lighter weight cable
Designed for 2C response
Observation: hydrophone better than geophone
Figure 9: The NESSIE* 4C MultiWave Array* system has been specifically designed to
give good 4C vector response. Unlike OBC, which has externally mounted geophones, the
NESSIE 4C MultiWave Array system incorporates sensors within a heavy cable. Geco-
Prakla claims that this improves the data quality and consistency.
interpretation of each time-lapse data set.
VSP data and well logs should be used to
calibrate the seismic response. Pressure and
resistivity sensors are needed to calibrate
the fluid front locations.
New, innovative software has been
developed within Geco-Prakla to compute
and manipulate seismic attributes, and to
use these attributes to classify and map
reservoir properties. This toolkit is now
helping to reveal reservoir structure and
properties far away from any wells. Figure 10: Hydrophone cables laid in position on the
seabed over Foinaven Field, west of Shetland. To
make sure that strong currents did not move the
cables (which would have affected the repeatability
of the survey), they were buried in a seabed trench
'dug' using a water jet from a remotely operated
vehicle – technology routinely applied to
transoceanic power and telecommunications cables.
Improved Recovery and Production – Gas Reservoir Solutions 7