Resolution, Resolution, Resolution - An Ultra-high Resolution Seismic Case Study from the Barents Sea

The Wisting discovery is a shallow oil field in the Norwegian Barents Sea. The most prominent reservoir is the Upper Triassic to Middle Jurassic Realgrunnen subgroup, with the Fuglen formation acting as cap rock. With a water depth of approximately 400m, the reservoir is situated only 250m below the seabed.

To be able to further mature the Wisting project towards field development, improved ability to perform detailed reservoir characterization and a better understanding of the reservoir architecture are considered crucial. Ultra-high resolution on a new seismic dataset is a key factor to achieve this. Such dataset is expected to provide improved fault definition and more detailed imaging of the Stø reservoir, both for the top reservoir structure and internal layering in the Realgrunnen subgroup.

This is how the idea of a new seismic dataset was born and the quest for the perfect seismic dataset was started, a dataset which would fit all these ultra-high frequency requirements. Based on previous results from multi-client Ultra-High Resolution seismic data acquisition in the Barents Sea, the narrow near offset distribution and the wide frequency spectrum of the UHR data was expected to provide a significant uplift from the existing 3D data on Wisting.