Targeting the Permo-Triassic Tight Gas in the Khuff: Lessons Learned in the Journey towards Development, Offshore Abu Dhabi, UAE

Abstract

Exploration drilling for gas potential in Khuff Formation started more than 40 years ago and wells across multiple assets in offshore Abu Dhabi showed the presence of sizeable reserves. With increasing recent importance on gas production, there is a plan for moving towards development for those Permian tight gas structures to address the nation's gas needs. This paper will try to address the lessons learned from the recent appraisal wells in Khuff, the uncertainties and the success criteria. There have been multiple wells drilled through the Khuff Formation in Offshore UAE in the last two years and have yielded a wealth of information from downhole well logs, mud logs, well test results and core data. The downhole logs acquired in these wells ranged from basic triple-combo and mud logs to image and dipole sonic logs, along with formation testing and sampling measurements, followed by well tests across the zones of interest. Interpretation of all these data have revealed some interesting lessons learned. The shallow marine sequence of the Khuff Formation is generally characterized by poor porosity and low matrix permeability; however, the diagenetic overprint has resulted in a significant heterogeneity development, which controls the present-day porosity and permeability development at the wells. The well test results show variations in terms of 2 or 3 orders of magnitude at the same interval, which highlights potentially problematic development strategies. We have observed significant differences in terms of lithology, porosity and other reservoir quality indicators between wells, located a kilometre apart. Optimization of logging suite to minimize petrophysical evaluation uncertainty will be discussed. Characterising this heterogeneity is key for future economic success of this play. Possible role of fractures influencing flow from the Khuff have been discussed in older publications, however no conclusions were arrived at, with certainty. Presence of fractures and faults beyond the immediate vicinity of the well might be something to look at, in terms of understanding the potential productivity of those intervals. A big step for developing Khuff Formation might be in terms of deciding the optimal stimulation strategy and this is something, which remains to be studied extensively in UAE. Closing the loop of interpretation of the acquired logs with the final well-test results and production logs gives us the advantage of hindsight and helps us in separating out the key productivity indicators as well as bring out the uncertainties in formation evaluation, which affect these tight gas reservoirs.