Abstract
Statoil took over operatorship of block BM-ES-11 in March 2004 with the objective of identifying new exploration prospects near and under salt bodies. An integrated geological and geophysical project was initiated to provide reliable data for prospect generation in the salt flank and sub-salt areas in the southern part of block BM-ES-11, c.f. Figure 1. Due to the license period, a full prestack depth migration (i.e. preSDM) project was not an option. An alternative integrated post stack depth migration (i.e. postSDM) project was undertaken to help identify and constrain prospectivity in this area. The input to this project was zero offset data derived through demigration of stacked pre stack Kirchhoff time migration (i.e. preSTM) data. The interval velocity depth model evolved through a conventional model building work flow combined with gravity modelling. This was needed in order to constrain the interpretation during the salt flood stage for more confident identification of possible base of salt events. The interpretation of the final volumes was aided by use of 3D visualisation and 2D acoustic and elastic computer based simulation guiding the interpretation close to the salt flanks. A dataset over an area of 1400 sq km of data was processed and interpreted using this new workflow under tight time constrains. Several new prospects were identified using the workflow described in this article. These new prospects had not been identified on the original preSTM data. In a little over 6 months both processing and interpretation were complete enabling prospect generation work to meet the requested deadlines.