My colleague Keith Meekins shared an informative AAPG article about the importance of Miocene reservoirs in offshore oil and gas production worldwide.
“The Miocene delivered a significant amount of sand with excellent reservoir characteristics around the world,” noted Erik Scott, exploration geologist and consulting geologist/sedimentologist.
“Generally, hydrocarbons are coming from deeper, older rock – the Cretaceous, the Jurassic. By the time these source rocks get to the (hydrocarbon) generation window, the Miocene reservoirs are in place,” Scott said.
“Generally, the Miocene deposits are surrounded by fine-grained muds that produced sealing potential,” he noted.
More:
- Miocene reservoirs account for more than 40 percent of established hydrocarbon reserves in the deepwater Gulf. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management identifies more than 9 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable Miocene resources.
- Recently, Eni found a giant Miocene natural gas accumulation in the Kutei Basin offshore Indonesia with an estimated 5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 300 million barrels of condensate in place.
- Azule Energy, equally owned by Eni and BP, made a recent Miocene oil discovery with an estimated 500 million barrels of crude offshore Angola.
Keith points to RTM (reverse-time migration) as an important factor in helping to unlock Miocene resources. RTM produces dramatically improved images below salt bodies and in areas of complex overburden. Per AAPG, Talos Energy used reprocessed RTM seismic to identify a bypassed Miocene fault-block closure in the Green Canyon Area of the Gulf. This structure had previously been invisible.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 