CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 Problem statement

The deep-water province offshore Rovuma Basin in Mozambique has become an
important focus for petroleum exploration recently. Anadarko, as operator of Rovuma
Offshore Area 1, made the first giant discovery in February 2010, followed by several
other major discoveries by the operators Anadarko in Area 1 and Eni in Area 4 (Figure
1.1). The authorities presented on September 6th, 2014 at 2nd Mozambique Geology
Congress an estimate of in-place resources of 170 - 200 tcf gas (Macauhub, 2014). The
major discoveries are in Oligocene, Eocene and Paleocene reservoirs, trapped in complex
tectonic structures in a system of extensional faults and compressional deep-water foldand-thrust belts (DWFTBs), and especially in deep-water submarine fans (Mahanjane and
Franck, 2014; Law, 2011). The discoveries are in water depth ranging from 650 to 2300
meters. As in all deep-water environments, wells are expensive and so to appraise these
discoveries, an extensive use of the high quality seismic data should be done, such that
the risk is sufficiently reduced to justify the drilling of the exploration well (Connolly et
al., 2002).
Amplitude variation with offset (AVO) was successfully used to identify gas-sand
reservoir in the study area, within the now relinquished Statoil operated license Rovuma
Offshore Area 2 & 5 (Figure 1.1) in the Rovuma Basin. However, in another case within
the study area a dry well was drilled into porous clean water sands (much lower clay
content than in gas sands reservoirs Chapter 3) that also produce AVO anomaly.
Approximately 150 kilometers north of the study area, Anadarko mapped the prospects,
discovered the giant Rovuma Basin gas reservoirs and successfully appraised the
discoveries as a result of the application of extended elastic impedance (EEI) method.
However, the reservoirs in the giant discoveries are younger compared to the age of the

reservoirs of the discovery in the study area, and the tectonic structures are also
completely different.
EEI is an extension of normalized elastic impedance (EI), and was introduced by
Whitcombe et al. (2002) to solve the physically meaningful angles of incidence of the
normalized EI, with the final goal the imaging of both fluid and lithology. The
relationship between EEI and reservoir properties is investigated by correlation analysis
between EEI logs and available petrophysical and lithology logs as a function of angle
Chi (). Once the optimum angle is determined, AVO analysis is carried out to obtain
intercept and gradient attributes, and their linear combination allows the determination of
the reservoir properties (Arcis, 2015)
The motivation for EEI study in this study area stems from the failure on two drilled wells
projected to intersect economic reservoir sands identified by the application of AVO
analysis.

Figure 1.1 Map showing the current concessions in Mozambique (left) and highlight of
the Rovuma Basin and the discoveries in Area 1 and Area 4 (right).

Figure 1.2 Map showing the location of 3D seismic survey that defines the study area,
outlined by the white rectangle. The blue lines are the inlines (South North) and
crosslines (East West) profiles used in this research. The green arrow indicates
northern direction.
1.2 Research objectives
In a broad sense, the objectives of this study are to apply EEI inversion technique to
identify, delineate and characterize two proved gas-sand reservoirs and two water filled
sands, and identify other prospective areas to address the location for new exploration
wells. These involve creating new petrophysical rock properties logs from the available
well log data and integrate them with seismic data to characterize the reservoirs. The
output of this study can be effectively used for further exploration and future field
development.
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1.3 Data inventory

The study area is located in offshore Rovuma Basin, north of Mozambique and it covers
an area of approximately 600 km2 (Figure 1.2). The study will mainly focus on two gas
zones in well_1 and two water zones in well_2. 3D seismic and well log data (Table 1.1)
used in this study were generously provided by the Instituto Nacional de Petrleo (INP).
The seismic data was acquired and processed in 2012 and the well log suites were
acquired in mid-2013 by Statoil, during the exploration phase in this area.
The high quality 3D seismic data include pre-stack time migrated (PSTM) gathers.
(Figures 1.3) The survey area has 1460 inlines (IL) and 2600 crosslines (XL) spaced at
12.5 meters interval, sampled at 4 milliseconds and recorded down to 7500 milliseconds.
The well log curves from the 2 wells include: gamma ray, deep resistivity, P- and S-wave
sonic, density, neutron-porosity and caliper. Check-shots data from both 2 wells were also
available. Hampson Russell Suite (HRS 10) was used for this study.
Table 1.1 Well database

Figure 1.3 Pre-stack time migrated (PSTM) gathers converted to super gathers to
supress some noise effect. The displayed window corresponds to XL 6025, 6029, 6033
and 6037, between 1950 ms and 3450 ms around the well_2 location. The red line is the
P-wave velocity for well_2. Evident bias effect can be seen at ultrafar offsets from 2500
and 3300ms.
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1.4 Methodology
The estimation of reservoir properties from well and seismic data generally consists of a
number of steps. For this study, the first step involves well log interpretation to establish
the basis for the relations between elastic properties and reservoirs properties. To achieve
this, the starting point is the interpretation of the available well log data (Table 1.1). This
step is followed by generation and interpretation of petrophysical parameters (bulk
modulus (k), shear modulus (), Poisson`s ratio, VpVs ratio, lambda-rho, mu-rho) and
reservoir parameters (porosity (), water saturation (Sw) and volume of shale (Vsh)). The
generated logs (petrophysical and reservoir parameters) are crossplotted together with the
original logs to discriminate the lithology, the fluid content and for delineation of the
reservoirs zones.
The second step concentrates on EEI logs and EEI reflectivity volumes generation
following the workflow in Figure 1.4. The EEI logs are generated based on crosscorrelation analysis to determine the best angle chi () for different petrophysical and
reservoir parameters previously generated during well log analysis (first step). On the
other hand, the EEI reflectivity volumes are generated based on intercept and gradient
attributes obtained from AVO analysis and determined angle ().
The last step of the study focuses on EEI inversion (Figure 1.4) and interpretation of the
results. The generated EEI petrophysical parameter volumes are inverted to understand
the characteristics of the reservoir in-situ and away from the borehole, to distinguish
different lithology and fluid content and identify new prospective targets.
Prior to the inversion, seismic to well calibration using check-shot data is performed to
correlate the seismic data with the rock properties. Details on wavelet extraction, the most
important element on seismic to well calibration, is demonstrated. By establishing this
relationship the value of seismic data is optimized and the accuracy of the reservoir
properties to be extrapolated away from the borehole are improved.

Figure 1.4 EEI inversion workflow used in this study

1.5 Geology of the study area
The study area is within in Rovuma Basin (Figure 1.1). The Rovuma Basin is located
along the eastern margin of northern Mozambique and southern Tanzania, forming one
of a series of continental passive margin basins that stretch along the coast of East Africa
(Gilardi et al., 2014). The portion of the Rovuma Basin in Mozambique covers an area of
approximately 29,500 km2, of which 17,000 km2 are onshore and 12,500 km2 offshore
(ENH, 2000). It is characterized by N-S structural trends (Figure 1.5), where the main
structural elements are the Rovuma Delta, Ibo High horst, Davie Facture Zone, Quirimbas
Graben, Palma embayment and Lacerda Graben (Salman and Abdula, 1995). The
sedimentary fill of the basin is associated to Gondwana break-up (Salman and Abdula,
1995) and it can be divided into five tectono-stratigraphic mega-sequences (ENH, 2000)
related to different break up phases (Figure 1.6): (1) The first phase was pre-rift, from
Permian to Triassic, is presumed to be equivalent to Karro; (2) the syn-rift phase, from
Triassic to Jurassic is mainly composed by continental clastic sediments deposited in
series of half-grabens; (3) the early drift phase, during Middle Jurassic to Aptian, started
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with a period of restricted shallow marine sedimentation deposited on a platform formed

on the margin of the evolving oceanic during the Middle Jurassic. Probably, more than 3
km of sediments may have been accumulated in the deepest part of the Rovuma Basin.
As Madagascar separated southwards from the African mainland, an extensive carbonate
platform developed and gradually was covered by prograding Upper Jurassic to Middle
Cretaceous marine clastics; (4) the late drift phase, from Aptian to Oligocene, thick and
uniform sequence of open sea marine marls argillaceous were deposited. During
Oligocene, the Rovuma River delta system began to form; (5) the final phase is
characterized by deltaic progradation, from Oligocene to present day. The deltaic
progradation produced a thick, eastward prograding wedge of rapidly deposited clastic
sediments.
Several play-types have been identified in Rovuma Basin (ENH, 2000). The plays include
traps in pre-rift fault blocks (phase 1), stratigraphic traps in Middle-Upper Jurassic shelfedge carbonates and Middle-Upper Cretaceous sands (phase 4). Younger plays include
stratigraphic traps in lower Tertiary basin-floor fans and structural traps associated with
deltaic growth faults in Oligocene-Miocene sands (phase 5) (Smelror et al., 2006). Recent
hydrocarbon exploration activities in the basin have proven a worth petroleum system in
both phase 4 and 5 traps, where an estimate of in-place resources of 170 - 200 tcf gas
were discovered between 2010 and 2015. In addition to the traps in phase 4 and 5 are
Eocene and Palaeocene traps. The main traps in the study area are Upper-Jurassic and
Lower Cretaceous sands associated with the Ibo High horst (phase 3). The potential
source rock are considered to be in the syn-rift and early drift sequence throughout the
basin, however, little information has been documented (Smelror et al., 2006).

Figure 1.5 Rovuma Basin structural framework (ENH, 2000)

Figure 1.6 Rovuma Basin generalized stratigraphy (ENH, 2000)

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