PE 321: Exploration Methods for Oil

Introduction to exploration methods:

Exploration is the process of trying to find accumulations of oil and natural gas
trapped under the Earth’s surface. Production is the process of recovering those
hidden resources for processing, marketing and use.

To understand the challenges the oil and natural gas industry faces in exploration
and production, it helps to understand how oil and gas accumulations – often
called “reservoirs” – develop in the first place:

Oil and natural gas are formed when decaying plants and micro-organisms are
trapped in layers of sediment and – over the course of millions of years –
become buried deep within the earth, where underground heat and pressure turn
them into useful hydrocarbons, such as oil and natural gas.

The layers of rock in which hydrocarbons are formed are called source rocks.
High pressures underground tend to squeeze hydrocarbons out of source rocks
into what are called reservoir rocks. These are rocks, such as sandstone, which
feature pores large enough to permit fluids like oil, natural gas, and water to pass
through them. Since oil and natural gas are less dense than water, they will float
upward toward the surface. If nothing stops this migration, the oil and natural gas
may reach daylight through what is called a surface seep.
More often, however, hydrocarbons’ path upward is blocked by a layer of
impermeable rock, such as shale, or by some other geologic formation. These
trap the oil and natural gas, either in an underground pocket or in a layer of
reservoir rock, so that it may be recovered only by drilling a well.

There isn't any way to be absolutely sure where new oil and natural gas reserves
are located, so petroleum engineers need to collect clues as to what lies deep
beneath the earth's surface. Advanced technology has revolutionized the
exploration process for oil and natural gas, and helps them pinpoint potential
reserves with greatly improved accuracy. This results in fewer wells, and lowered
exploration costs.

Engineers can gather above-ground clues using airplanes and satellites to map
the surface, to identify promising geological formations, and to look for oil and
natural gas seeps. Ships can do the same for the ocean floor.

But engineers often get much more useful information by looking at geological
structures and rock properties below the surface. They use a number of
strategies including:

seismic Surveys
Seismic surveys are done by sending high-energy sound waves into the ground
and measuring how long they take to reflect back to the surface. Since sound
PE 321: Exploration Methods for Oil

travels at different speeds as it passes through different materials, computers

can use seismic data to create a 3-D map of what lies below the surface.

Geologists and geophysicists – known as "explorationists" – use these 3-D

seismic images to look for accumulations of oil and natural gas. Engineers then
use the data to plan the safest, most cost-effective well path to the reservoir.

Once a reservoir has been located and put into production, a series of 3-D
seismic surveys can be taken over time to see if all of the oil and natural gas
reserves are being efficiently drained. If not, additional wells can be drilled to
produce these bypassed pockets of reserves.

While seismic data are extremely useful to geologists, these surveys are also
very expensive.

Exploration Wells
When the data indicate a likely site for oil and natural gas reserves, an
exploration well is often drilled. Rock samples from the well are brought to the
surface and analyzed. Well logs measure the electrical, magnetic and radioactive
properties of the rocks.

By examining this information, a geologist can learn a great deal about the sub-
surface structures and whether or not the site is likely to produce oil and natural
gas in economic or "paying" quantities.

Gravity and Geomagnetic Surveys

These relatively inexpensive techniques can identify potential oil and natural gas
bearing sedimentary basins and structures. High-resolution aero-magnetic
surveys done by special aircraft can also show fault traces and differentiate
between different rock types near the surface

Exploration geophysics:

Is an applied branch of geophysics, which uses physical methods (such as

seismic,

measure the physical properties of the subsurface, along with the anomalies in
those properties.

It is most often used to detect or infer the presence and position of economically
useful geological deposits, such as ore minerals; fossil fuels and
other hydrocarbons; geothermal reservoirs; and groundwater reservoirs.
PE 321: Exploration Methods for Oil

Exploration geophysics can be used to directly detect the target style of

mineralization, via measuring its physical properties directly. For example, one
may measure the density contrasts between iron ore and silicate wall rocks, or
may measure the electrical conductivity contrast between conductive sulfide
minerals and barren silicate minerals.

Geophysical methods

The main techniques used are:

 Role of Applied Geophysics in Field of Oil and Gas Exploration
 Magnetic Method: Basic Concepts, Field Work, Results and Interpretation
 Gravity Method: Basic Concepts, Field Work , Results and Interpretation
 Seismic(Refraction Method ): Basic Concepts, Field Work, Results and
Interpretation
 Seismic(Reflection Method): Basic Concepts, Field Work, Results and
Interpretation
 Seismology(Induce Tremors ): Relation to Oil Production, Basic
Concepts, Field Work, Results and Interpretation
 Resistivity Method: Basic Concepts, Field Work, Results and
Interpretation
 Radioactive method: Basic Concepts, Field Work, Results and
Interpretation
 Geothermal: principle of the Method, Source of Temperature,
Measurements and Interpretation
 Application of Geophysical Method to Problems in Petroleum
Engineering.

Many other techniques, or methods of integration of the above techniques, have

been developed and are currently used. However these are not as common due
to cost-effectiveness, wide applicability and/or uncertainty in the results
produced.

Geophysical methods
Passive:
Method using the natural fields of the Earth, e.g. variations in gravity over a
buried object
PE 321: Exploration Methods for Oil

Active:
Method that requires the input of artificially generated energy, e.g example:
seismic waves are generated by an explosion

The objective of geophysics

is to locate or detect the presence of subsurface structures or bodies and
determine their size, shape, depth, and physical properties (density, velocity,
porosity…) + fluid content