Sumit Verma

The Barnett Shale is one of the most important unconventional shale plays in the USA. Identification of the key unconventional gas/tight rock parameters - total organic content (TOC) and frackability (ease with which the rock can be fractured) are key to economic completion processes. Singh (2008) conducted a complete analysis of cores and gamma ra...

In this study, we use an example in a Barnett Shale play to demonstrate how supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques provide the right leverages for seismic interpreters. By analyzing seismic facies map generated by unsupervised self-organizing map, gamma ray estimated by artificial neural network, and brittleness index estimated by...

The Permian Basin is one of the most important petroleum-producing regions in the United States. The structural history of the Permian Basin is extremely complex. Most of the structural traps in the Permian Basin are associated with the strike-slip fault system, which presented challenges for past structural interpretation completed primarily using...

Mixed carbonate-siliciclastic channelized systems pose significant challenges for geological characterization due to their high lithological variability. Understanding the lithological distribution is crucial for deciphering basin evolution and guiding ongoing drilling operations.#xD;An example of such a mixed channel system is identified in the Sa...

From the geological mysteries of shale formations to cutting-edge techniques in gas extraction, this book unveils the essential knowledge to harness the potential of shale gas. The book integrates various data types such as outcrop, well logs, core data, etc.) for hydrofracturing—from basin-scale to nano-pore-scale. The book included a wealth of in...

Seismic and well log imaging are among the most important tools for subsurface characterization and reservoir delineation. The significance of these two tools has further increased as we have started exploring unexplored deepwater reservoirs. Seismic attributes help identify different geological features by revealing geomorphology, whereas the ampl...

Deepwater Sedimentary Systems: Science, Discovery and Applications helps readers identify, understand and interpret deepwater sedimentary systems at various scales – both onshore and offshore. This book describes the best practices in the integration of geology, geophysics, engineering, technology and economics used to inform smart business decisio...

The Fasken C Ranch is located in Andrews, Ector, Midland, and Martin counties and covers approximately 440 mi2 on the Western edge of the Midland Basin (Verma and Scipione, 2020). Formations from the Devonian through Permian were selected for this project . Multi-attribute analysis was previously run on the Woodford by Verma and Scipione (2020). Th...

Active macro seepages of methane that occur in between the north bank of the Brahmaputra river and Himalayan foothill region of Assam Arakan Basin, India, indicate the presence of hydrocarbon accumulation in the subsurface, but the hydrocarbon prospects in this region are not well studied. We carried out an extensive field sampling, which included...

Deltaic channels are good exploration targets and form potential hydrocarbon reservoirs. Generally, distributary sand-filled deltaic channels have high porosity and high permeability sandstones hence can form good quality reservoirs. We delineate deltaic channels within Cree Sand member of the Logan Canyon formation in the Penobscot field, offshore...

Most of the geological processes are gradual, which results in gradual variation in the lithofacies, both spatially and temporally. In machine learning framework, unlike the common deep neural network (DNN), the recurrent neural network (RNN) honors the spatio-temporal relationships. There are different RNN models, some of which are more useful for...

Seismic geometric attributes such as coherence, dip, curvature, and aberrancy are commonly used by seismic interpreters for defining geological features including faults, channels, angular uncofrimitis etc. Commonly used coherence attributes, e. g. cross-correlation or energy ratio similarity, are sensitive to only waveform shape changes. Whereas t...

Seismic coherence is of the essence for seismic interpretation as it highlights seismic discontinuity features caused by the deposition process, reservoir boundaries, tectonic movements, etc. Since its appearance in 1995, seismic coherence has become one of the most popular and highly recognized interpretation tools. In the last 25 years, there hav...

In West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico, the Permian Basin has been home for decades of oil and gas exploration since the 1920’s. This complex sedimentary foreland basin formed during the development of the Marathon-Ouachita Fold Belt during the collision of Gondwana and Laurentia. As a result, tectonic activity gives an uplift to the Central Bas...

We analyzed a synthetic transfer zone and its associated fault planes and relay ramp in Penobscot, a potential offshore field in the Scotian Basin. Transfer zones are structural areas where one fault dies out and another fault begins, forming a relay ramp in the middle. They can be categorized as divergent, convergent, and synthetic transfer zones...

Shale resource assessment involves a detailed characterization of organic and geomechanical parameters for better insights on the reservoir properties and classifying areas of economic yield. In order to assess the Eocene Younger Cambay Shale (YCS) Group of the Ankleshwar field, western India for feasible shale resource play, we have applied a mult...

One of the major objectives of seismic interpretation is to effectively predict the distribution of reservoir facies away from well control. With the advent of increasing number of meaningful seismic attributes, it is time consuming and laborious to analyze them through conventional analytical methods. Machine learning techniques analyze higher dim...

Submarine landslides are mass movements that transport sediment across the continental shelf to the deep ocean. This phenomenon happens when the shear stress exceeds the frictional resistance of the slope. We analyze a variety of seismic attributes to interpret large submarine slide blocks on the North Slope, Alaska. Results show that the slide blo...

We have analyzed a 3D seismic survey acquired for a carbon sequestration project on top of the Moxa Arch in southwestern Wyoming. We observed a zone of discontinuous reflectors on vertical slices of seismic amplitude volume, whereas, the northwest–southeast lineations were observed on the time slices. We performed a seismic to well tie that suggest...

Exploration of the Brookian sandstone reservoirs in the Nanushuk and Torok Formations on the North Slope of Alaska is a hot topic and presents opportunities to the oil and gas community because of their shallow depth, vast extent, and scope of development. The consecutive hydrocarbon discoveries announced by Repsol-Armstrong, Caelus Energy, and Con...

Seismic coherence is commonly used to delineate structural and stratigraphic discontinuities. We generally use full-bandwidth seismic data to calculate coherence. However, some seismic stratigraphic features may be buried in this full-bandwidth data but can be highlighted by certain spectral components. Due to thin-bed tuning phenomena, discontinui...

The Permian Basin is one of the richest petroleumprovinces in the world, yet it has been“on its deathbed”numerous times. As early as 1939, prognosticatorshave claimed that all the oil there was in the basin hadbeen found. Each time the basin has been left for dead,it is the application of new research and technologiesthat proved the naysayers wrong...

The Permian Basin is a structurally complex sedimentary basin with an extensive history of tectonic deformation. As the basin evolved through time, sediments dispersed into the basin floor from surrounding carbonate platforms leading to various mass movements. One such mass movement is observed on 3D seismic survey in the Upper Leonard interval (Lo...

An integrated 3D seismic survey, well log, and core data analysis provides a better understanding of paleo-depositional environments. We identified N-S oriented unique channel-like features in the northern part of the study area, whereas the orientation of these channel-like features changes to NE-SW in the southern part of the study area, in the G...

The Moxa Arch has been an important geologic structure for hydrocarbon exploration since the mid-1940s in the Green River Basin. It is also one of the two carbon sequestration sites in Wyoming. The early Jurassic Nugget formation within the Moxa Arch is a possible reservoir for carbon sequestration, however, past drilling may have compromised it as...

The Kora volcano is buried in the Northern Graben of the Taranaki Basin in New Zealand. Overlying the volcanic activity are multiple streams. Volcanic activity occurred during the Miocene age with the streams occurring prior to the volcano during the early Miocene age. The Kora volcano was constructed in a deep-water setting and throughout time bur...

Moxa Arch is a potential site for carbon sequestration in the state of Wyoming, recognized by the US Department of Energy. In this paper, we primarily focus on improving our understanding of the geology, including lithofacies and depositional environment, of Nugget Sandstone-a potential carbon storage reservoir, by integrating results from three di...

Noise reduction is important for signal analysis. In this paper, we propose a hybrid denoising method based on thresholding and data-driven signal decomposition. The principle of this method is to reconstruct the signal with previously thresholded intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) based methods decompose a signal i...

Our study area in Rock Sprigs Uplift, Wyoming, lies in a proximity of the carbon dioxide producing Jim Bridger power plant and hence is a good site for carbon sequestration. Two subsurface reservoirs within this area are being analyzed for their capability of long-term carbon storage. The presence and orientation of fractures within a reservoir and...

The core of the Grayburg Formation, drilled in the Midland Basin between Andrews and Midland is used to prove the oil and gas fields of West Texas. The target of this well is to locate oil seeps for production and exploratory purposes. The core taken from the well is used to make thin sections and provide an overall description of the different lit...

Potential reservoirs can be found within deltaic channels, these channels have the ability to form continuous transport systems for hydrocarbons. Distributary sand-filled channels in particular can serve as excellent reservoirs. The emphasis of this study is taking a detailed look into the sand channels within the Cree Sand of the Logan Canyon, as...

A synthetic transfer zone is a structural area where deformational strain is transferred from one fault system to another, both dipping in the same direction. As a result, a relay ramp is formed in the overlap zone between the two faults. Relay zones not only act as conduit for sedimentation and lateral paths for fluid flow, but their characteristi...

The Moxa Arch has been an important geologic structure for hydrocarbon exploration since the mid-1940s in the Green River Basin. It is also one of the two carbon sequestration sites in Wyoming. The early Jurassic Nugget formation within the Moxa Arch is a possible reservoir for carbon sequestration, however, past drilling may have compromised it as...

The Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin is one of the most important resource plays in USA. TOC and brittleness can help to characterize a resource play. Higher TOC or organic content are generally associated with rocks with higher clay content, which are ductile in nature. Brittle rocks are easily fractured, with fracture better held open with p...

Although modern recording capacity facilitates dense seismic acquisition, many, if not most, legacy 3D land surveys are spatially aliased with respect to ground roll. Irregular topography and weathering zones give rise to ground roll that has piecewise rather than continuous linear moveout (LMO). Dispersion often results in shingled events whose ph...

Coal is one of the most important sources of energy. There are a number of problems associated with the mining of coal; one of them is the detection of unknown structural features encountered in coal measures. The commonly occurring structural features include fault, wedge out, seam splitting, dykes, cavities both water and air filled. The geophysi...

In laboratories, core cannot always be cut exactly along the axis of symmetry (normal to the bedding plane), which leads to a minor core cutting rotation (CCR) error. The presence of a small CCR error can give rise to an error in computation of anisotropic parameters, which will result in erroneous P-wave and S-wave velocities (VP, VSV and VSH). In...

Estimation of stimulated rock volume (SRV) is the cornerstone offield development planning in shale reservoirs. The EUR has a first order dependency on the SRV and therefore its estimation is extremely critical for field development. In this paper, we propose a methodology to estimate the SRV and hence the EUR for a shale reservoir using seismic da...

Introduction • Workflow • Study Area • Theory • Data and Methodology • Results and Discussions • Conclusions Structure • Natural fractures linked to in situ stress field. • Fractures induce seismic anisotropy. • Algorithms developed for azimuthal anisotropy analysis using seismic data. • P-wave multiazimuth seismic data were used for estimating fra...

We present a reservoir geophysics study, including rock physics modeling and seismic inversion, of a carbon dioxide sequestration site in Southwestern Wyoming, namely the Rock Springs Uplift, and build a petrophysical model for the potential injection reservoirs for carbon dioxide sequestration. Our objectives include the facies classification and...

Wyoming produces a significant percentage of the coal used to generate electricity at power plants in the United States. Carbon sequestration can substantially reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, and the Moxa Arch in SW Wyoming has been recognized as a potential sequestration site. In this study, we analyzed 3D seismic data acquir...

The Chicontepec Formation in east-central Mexico is comprised of complex unconventional reservoirs consisting of low-permeability disconnected turbidite reservoir facies. Hydraulic fracturing increases permeability and joins these otherwise tight reservoirs. We use a recently acquired 3D seismic survey and well control to divide the Chicontepec res...

The Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin is one of the most important resource plays in the USA. The total organic carbon (TOC) and brittleness can help to characterize a resource play to assist in the search for sweet spots. Higher TOC or organic content are generally associated with hydrocarbon storage and with rocks that are ductile in nature....

The term acquisition footprint is commonly used to define patterns in seismic time and horizon slices that are closely correlated to the acquisition geometry. Seismic attributes often exacerbate footprint artifacts and may pose pitfalls to the less experienced interpreter. Although removal of the acquisition footprint is the focus of considerable r...

Legacy seismic surveys cover much of the midcontinent USA and Texas, with almost all 3D surveys acquired in the 1990s considered today to be low fold. Fortunately, recent advances in 5D interpolation have not only enhanced the quality of structural and stratigraphic images, but they have also improved the data sufficiently to allow more quantitativ...

Rock physics models allow establishing a physical-mathematical relation between rock and fluid properties and geophysical attributes. In this study, we propose to apply rock physics models to a geophysical dataset measured at two well locations near the proposed Snake River Plain FORGE site in eastern Idaho. The potential target is a rhyolite layer...

Knowledge of induced fractures can help to evaluate the success of reservoir stimulation. Seismic P-waves through fracturing media can exhibit azimuthal variation in traveltime, amplitude, and thin-bed tuning, so amplitude variation with azimuth (AVAz) can be used to evaluate the hydraulic-fracturing-caused anisotropy. The Barnett Shale of the Fort...

Seismic attenuation, generally related to the presence of hydrocarbon accumulation, fluid-saturated fractures, and rugosity, is extremely useful for reservoir characterization. The classic constant attenuation estimation model, focusing on intrinsic attenuation, detects the seismic energy loss because of the presence of hydrocarbons, but it works p...

Although modern recording capacity facilitates dense seismic acquisition, many, if not most, legacy 3D land surveys are spatially aliased with respect to ground roll. Irregular topography and weathering zones give rise to ground roll that has piecewise rather than continuous linear moveout (LMO). Dispersion often results in shingled events whose ph...

Seismic modeling is commonly used in determining subsurface illumination of alternative seismic survey designs, in the calibration of seismic processing and imaging algorithms, and in the design of effective processing workflows. Seismic modeling also forms the mathematical kernel of impedance inversion and is routinely used to predict the amplitud...

In this study, we show an application of estimating total organic carbon (TOC) in a Barnett Shale play from the widely available triple combo logs using support vector machine (SVM). Being a nonlinear supervised learning technique, SVM provides superior estimation than the traditional multi-linear regression. Using triple combo logs to automaticall...

Whether it is in reference to the limitations of interpretation or associated with seismic processing, usage of the phrase acquisition footprint is never in a positive context. Footprint contaminates both time structure map and impedance inversion. Although common, footprint is often poorly understood. Footprint is more common in older, lower fold...

Seismic interpretations are often highly subjective and depend on the interpreter's understanding of the limitations of seismic acquisition and processing as well as the tectonic and depositional environment. Small errors in processing may give rise to features that look like geology. Such processing errors may include improper statics, poor veloci...

Summary Seismic spectral attributes of apparent attenuation, as explained in the first part of this paper, measures the spectral changes of seismic signals due to absorption and scattering, which can provide quantitative measures of the seismic apparent attenuation effect. Seismic attenuation is sensitive to hydrocarbon accumulation, fluid-saturate...

Shale resource plays are fairly new to the petroleum industry, but they have reinvigorated oil and gas production in North America. Brittleness and TOC are the two most important parameters for shale resource characterization. Ideally, the multilinear and non-linear regression can be used to correlate TOC and brittleness measured on core to well lo...

Chert is an unconventional reservoir rock that has been developed successfully in west Texas, Oklahoma, California and Canada. Tripolitic chert is a diagenetically altered form of cherts which show high porosity and low resistivity. The Mississippian tripolitic chert is currently an exploration and development objective through-out southern Kansas...

Recently the Mississippi Lime has become one of the most active resource plays. Our study area falls in-between the Fort Worth and Midland Basins. The main production comes from high porosity tripolitic chert. Our objective is to use 3D seismic data to map the areal distribution of discontinuous tripolitic facies. In the early 1990s several 3D surv...

Conventional hydrocarbons reserves in the USA have gradually been reduced, and with the rising of oil prices, the sight of energy companies is on unconventional reservoirs. The Barnett shale is one of the most important unconventional reservoirs in the USA. It has been a challenge in unconventional reservoirs to find the petro-physical properties w...

Modern 3D seismic surveys are often of such good quality and 3D interpretation packages so user-friendly that seismic interpretation is no longer exclusively carried out by geophysicists. This ease-of-use has also been extended to more quantitative workflows, such as 3D prestack inversion, putting it in the hands of the "nonexpert" - be it geologis...

The study area is a gas field situated in the deepwater of east coast of India. The depositional setting is channel-levee complex. From seismic many smaller episodes of paleo-channel flow has been be distinguished within major channel-levee complexes. The smaller episodes of channels cut-fill and migrate, grow younger from bottom to top, depositing...