2023 PESA WEBINAR SERIES: Seismic Source Rock Global Tour

“There are no source rocks south of the Walvis Ridge” was not an uncommon phrase which sounded in the industry until quite recently. This myth was finally busted in 2022 when Shell and Total Energies respectively announced the giant Graff and Venus discoveries in the Orange Basin offshore Namibia. This was the grand finale of a long-standing debate in which model and data fought a hard battle. On the one hand, there was a model that did not support the presence, quality and maturity of source rocks over oceanic crust. On the other hand, the novel approach of applying seismic source rock characterization in a frontier basin was pointing to the presence of a world class source rock generating hydrocarbons migrating into large traps (Rodriguez et al., 2023 EAGE Uruguay)

In the Loseth et al., 2011 publication“Can hydrocarbon source rocks be identified on seismic data?” compelling evidence using a significant amount of North Sea seismic and well data indicated that seismic data can be used to identify source rocks.

Using a full source rock de-risking methodology and access to a large global seismic dataset has enabled identification of source rocks on seismic. This presentation will be a guided tour around the seismic expression of source rocks in frontier basins around the world.