Inventory of Hydrocarbon Shows in the Northern Dutch Offshore (Phase 2) (2016)

This MSc thesis has been written by former intern Youri Kickken.

Hydrocarbon (HC) Shows are valuable as potential exploration tool. HC Shows provide a first indication to whether a formation contains mobile hydrocarbons. Additionally, valuable information can be obtained with respect to hydrocarbon migration paths, and potential kitchen maturity and source rock typing. In the current project an evaluation and QC of a previously developed ‘EBN HC Show database’ has been performed. This consisted of evaluating and enhancing the existing workflow. Secondly, the focus was on expanding the database with wells in the Dutch northern offshore DEFAB area. Moreover, the existing 2D interactive topview QGIS visualization has been evaluated, improved and complemented with a user manual. The QGIS visualization is used in order to generate regional maps showing occurrences of hydrocarbons to assist exploration studies. The background surfaces are constructed by combining both the ‘EBN DEF survey’ and the ‘TNO 2012 offshore survey’. Besides the 2D QGIS visualization setup a new 3D visualization setup is designed for the Petrel E&P software. The goal for this is to visualize the HC Show data in the most important exploration window applications within the software. Also for this visualization setup a user manual is created, describing the workflow steps in Petrel projects. Furthermore, a QC on the data has been performed by correlating the Log Show data with the corresponding Drill Stem test (DST) intervals. A clearly positive correlation between these data types gives confidence in the methodology used in this project.

Lastly, a smooth handover has been realized by enhancing the HC Show ‘classification’ workflow with a new HC Show ‘Example Atlas’ and a project introduction for two new analysts.