The Plato Depression in the Lower Magdalena Basin is a Miocene depocenter where a thick, shale-prone marine sequence known as the Porquero Formation was laid down in basin-floor conditions. Seismic inversion carried out on new and existing 2D seismic data helped to focus early exploration on a shallow stratigraphic gas-sand play associated with what seemed to be isolated shale diapirs with shallow roots. A subsequent land 3D survey helped to locate the first exploratory well, which resulted in the discovery of the Guama gas-condensate field. The main reservoir consists of laminar, low-permeability sands in a relatively thick shale-prone sequence of Early and Middle Miocene age. Sequential application of acoustic and elastic inversion and AVO analysis was used to build an evolving 3D predictive model of gas sands, extracted from an otherwise featureless seismic cube. Workflows were based on careful rock-physics analysis, simultaneous seismic inversion, and AVA analysis supported by custom well-log and seismic-gather conditioning. Work routines carried out in parallel became essential to applying quality control and fine-tuning the model, which supported three additional successful wells, early reservoir planning, and key volumetrics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.