Seismic Lithological Survey : An Integrated Approach for the Exploration of Hydrocarbons

The overall goal of the LITASEIS Project is to integrate lithoseismic methods

developed in former German R+D projects (especially in ASW and LIPS) into a novel approach for the lithological interpretation of seismic waves. The background for this effort is given by the actually growing exploration depth of deep gas reservoirs in Germany and other European regions (5.000 - 6.000 m). In this depth the gas reservoirs are more and more of a facies type and are characterized by tight pay rock with transitions in porosity and permeability due to diagenetic processes.The common reflection seismics often fail in finding such reservoirs because of lack of substantial jumps in seismic impedance. For effective exploration in that depth the companies do need more and more LITHOSEISMIC METHODS in order to identify lithologic transitions out of seismic data. The former ASW and LIPS projects brought up several methodological developments which have been integrated into a novel exploration method in lithoseismics. In order to reach this goal the LITASEIS Group is built up mainly out of previous R+D Projects in lithoseismics (ASW+LIPS), which partly got funding by the EC DG 17 formerly. The project is organized as a cooperation project where the proposers 1 to 5 are cooperating under the project management of DGMK. The project is the methodical part of the whole LITASEIS-Program in Germany. Six German oil companies (BEB, Preussag Energie, RWE-DEA, Wintershall, ITAG, MOBIL) participate as project partners. This demonstrates the application character of the project. Contractor: DGMK Hamburg