Sandeep Chakravorty

Sweetspotting of the First Appraisal Campaign of Unconventional Resource Play in Kuwait

Organic rich Kerogen layer of Lower Kimmeridgian to Upper Oxfordian age, deposited throughout Kuwait, is a TOC rich layer with varying TOC content between 2 to 20 wt% (in the vertical section) and having an average TOC of about 8 wt%. The depth of occurrence of this layer favorably places this zone to be having potential in rich gas condensate resource in the northern part of Kuwait. This layer occurs at a depth of 14000-16000 ft with a reservoir temperature of 270⁰-275⁰F, pressure of 11000 psi and average thickness of over 50ft. This is one of the main source rocks for majority of the oil and gas fields of Kuwait. This Kerogen section is penetrated through a number of vertical wells, as part of development of deeper reservoirs in this area, which offers an excellent opportunity to evaluate this section through core and open-hole log data. Because of the strong acoustic contrast with the overlying and underlying layers, this reservoir section is a very strong mappable seismic reflector. As part of appraising the potential of this layer, as a resource play, a comprehensive success criteria has been worked out for location selection. An integration of all available geo-scientific data such as geochemical, 3D seismic attributes, petrophysical analysis, borehole image interpretations, geo-mechanical, core and mud logs has been carried out. The above data integration/analysis was combined with the success criteria, leading to selection of sweet-spots for planning the first dedicated horizontal well targeted on this layer. This paper presents the success criteria worked out and the integration of data for high grading the locale – sweet-spots, for the first set of horizontal wells for appraising this deep HP-HT unconventional play of Kuwait.