The Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America will provide $1.9 million to a wholly owned subsidiary of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists for joint-industry research into the use of seismic data in well planning.
SEG Advanced Modeling Corp. (SEAM) is conducting the project, which it calls Pressure Prediction and Hazard Avoidance.
“The intent of this project is to show our industry what current practice will produce when compared to a perfectly known geologic setting and fluid setting when the data used to determine pore pressure is as perfect as it will ever be,” said Bill Head, ultradeepwater senior manager of RPSEA, a nonprofit organization that manages research programs under contract to the Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory. “Then opportunity exists to improve how we predict pore pressure from seismic now and hopefully create suggestions to advance the science to a better, safer outcome.”
According to SEAM, the research consortium will provide a forum through which industry experts assess challenges in the use of seismic velocity and other seismic attributes to construct predrill pore pressure and shallow-hazards forecasts.
Project participants will use those challenges to design a comprehensive earth model and to acquire, through advanced computer simulation, benchmark data sets to be used by industry for quantifying risk and uncertainty associated with velocity models derived from seismic work.
The researchers also will develop methods for assessing risk and uncertainty in pressure prediction from seismic. The work will focus on the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, but results are expected to be more broadly applicable.
