Towards a Better Understanding of Shallow Seismic Anomalies in the Dutch Offshore

Recent exploration and production activities in the Cenozoic Southern North Sea (SNS) deltas, proved the economic potential of shallow gas resources, especially if located near existing infrastructures. Nonetheless, shallow gas production is still limited due to a lack of insight in the petroleum system, especially with respect to the relation between the anatomy of the delta and charging/trapping conditions. In order to mature the shallow gas play, a multidisciplinary workflow was applied to the SNS delta that involves 1) the reconstruction of the internally complex delta body, 2) a combined deterministic/stochastic approach to make reservoir property predictions, 3) evaluation of the HC origin, and 4) a grain-size based method to predict the seal-integrity of the sealing clay layers. The results present the first steps towards de-risking the shallow gas play in terms of trapping geometry, seal capacity, sourcing and migration. The presented workflow is applicable to areas were limited exploration data is available, but where critical production data is (still) missing.