WesternGeco to do seismic processing work for Byron’s Gulf of Mexico project

U.S. oil company Byron Energy has executed an agreement with WesternGeco, a Schlumberger subsidiary, to add additional licensed 3D seismic data to its in-house data inventory and perform new seismic data processing over the SM 71 project area in the Gulf of Mexico.

Byron said last Thursday that it would increase its contiguous 3D seismic data coverage in the SM 71 project area to a total of 445 square kilometers or 22 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lease blocks of 3D seismic.

Byron, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Byron Energy Inc., is the operator of SM 71 and holds a 50% working interest and a 40.625% net revenue interest in SM 71. Otto Energy holds the remaining interest in SM 71.

Under the agreement, WesternGeco will also reprocess the data using 3rd generation, high-frequency reverse time migration (RTM) and Kirchhoff PreStack depth migration algorithms to produce broadband, seismic imaging.

According to the company, this will improve the stratigraphic definition within the SM 71 project area which is a key to future drilling success and is Byron’s largest seismic processing project.

Additional processing work will involve high-resolution PreStack inversion processing and reservoir characterization imaging. This data will be used to further evaluate the producing intervals at SM 71 and derisk other prospects on Byron’s acreage within the project area.

In May 2016, Byron drilled the initial SM71 F1 well which led to the construction and installation of the company-operated SM71 F platform in November 2017.

Beginning in December 2017, Byron drilled two additional wells and subsequently completed the SM 71 F1, F2, and F3 wells. The wells are producing a combined gross 4,650 barrels of oil per day and 3.2 million cubic feet of gas per day.

Byron said that additional processing deliverables of the data processing would include RTM and Kirchhoff based common depth point angle gathers and offset stacks for amplitude versus offset analysis and a new suite of seismic inversion products to aid in reservoir characterization and understanding.

The processing portion of the project will take about six months and will begin immediately. In the interim, Byron has taken delivery of existing data products and has begun evaluating the data.

Byron currently holds leasehold rights as an operator to four OCS blocks within the SM71 project area and another three blocks are pending award to Byron as result of OCS Sale 250 held in March 2018. Six blocks are unleased in the project area and the remaining blocks are held by production. Oil and gas production in the project area has totaled 137 million barrels of oil and 2.2 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Maynard V. Smith, Byron’s CEO, said: “The key to finding more oil and gas is to use the latest available technology and that is what WesternGeco brings to the table. Using WesternGeco processed RTM data at SM71, we were fortunate to make one of the larger oil discoveries on the GOM shelf in recent years and bring it into production.”