The oil industry is under considerable pressure in its search for hydrocarbons and faces a major challenge in finding significant new reserves. The most easily identifiable structures and amplitude anomalies onshore and offshore have been drilled. The industry has become too reliant upon drilling amplitude anomalies over the last 30 years and has neglected using a complete integration of wells with seismic. Many companies are drilling prospects in the 40- to 100-acre range because of a perceived prospect shortage. Seismic sequence stratigraphic analysis, available to industry for over 25 years, is not being sufficiently utilized to obtain a complete integration of well and seismic data. Such analysis leads to better delineation of depositional environments, reservoir geometry and potential porosity trends. There probably are numerous prospects with substantial reserves both onshore and offshore the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, but they will not be found without a completely integrated analysis.

End_of_Record - Last_Page 17---------------