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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
Abstract
AAPG Bulletin, V.
Block
330 Field in Eugene Island, South Addition,
Offshore Louisiana
©Copyright 1998. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
1Manuscript received April 29, 1996; revised manuscript received
February 7, 1997; final acceptance September 3, 1997.
2Cornell University, Department of Geological Sciences,
Snee Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853. Present address: Shell Offshore, Inc.,
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130.
3Shell E&P Technology Company, Houston, Texas 77001.
Shell Offshore, Inc. (SOI) granted permission to publish this paper.
In addition, SOI provided data for the study and funding for publication.
We thank John Austin and the Pennzoil Corporation for donating the three-dimensional
(3-D) seismic survey, sand structure maps, pressure data, and well logs
that were used in this study. Landmark Graphics donated the 3-D seismic
workstation and software to the Global Basins Research Network (GBRN).
We are indebted to Dietmar Schumacher of Geo-Microbial Technologies, Inc.,
and Jean Whelan of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute for providing geochemical
data and insight into interpreting the data. Shell E&P Technology Company
provided CSP analyses. Reviews by Lawrence Cathles and Teresa Jordan improved
this manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the useful comments provided
by AAPG reviewers L. Fairchild and D. Tearpock. Beth Bishop and Teresa
Howley provided drafting assistance. This work is part of Laurel Alexanders
1995 Ph.D. dissertation. The work was supported by the GBRN and DOE grant
DC-FC22-93BC14961.
Abstract
A Pennzoil three-dimensional seismic survey, shot over the highly faulted
eastern anticlinal structure, enabled the detailed mapping of a buried,
down-to-the-north fault and the adjacent sands. This buried fault, fault
F, divides the main reservoirs of the EI-330 field into two separate fault
blocks. Fault-plane-section analysis, combined with pressure and geochemical
data from the two fault blocks, reveals that fault F is generally nonsealing
to lateral fluid migration between juxtaposed sands of the same age. The
fault is sealing to lateral fluid flow in the majority of cases where sands
of different ages are juxtaposed. In one case, the capillary pressure differential
between two juxtaposed sands was higher than can be attributed to permeability
differences of common Gulf Coast sands, suggesting that material in the
fault zone is the most likely cause of the lack of fluid flow between the
juxtaposed sands.
Reservoirs in the Eugene Island Block
330 (EI-330) field are believed
to have been filled through a complex pattern of cross-fault spilling through
juxtaposed sands, and possible vertical migration up associated growth
faults. Fault-plane-section analysis of a major basin-bounding fault shows
that given the present configuration of juxtaposed sands, cross-fault flow
cannot account for the filling of most EI-330 reservoirs; however, a syntectonic
process of across-fault spiral migration of hydrocarbons during active
slip on the fault could account for the filling of the reservoirs. Hydrocarbons
could have entered the shallow reservoirs about 0.68 Ma, before most of
the present downthrown sand-on-shale traps formed.
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