Exploring in Asia, Africa and the Americas for oil & gas in naturally fractured basement reservoirs: best practices & lessons learned

• Main Author: Tako Koning
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Georesursy Ltd. 2019-10-01
• Series: Georesursy
• Subjects: crystalline basement; oil and gas fields; fractured reservoir; weathered rock; world best practice; exploring; developing
• Online Access: https://geors.ru/archive/article/1003/

Basement rocks are important oil and gas reservoirs in a number of basins in the world. The basement oil and gas play has intensified in the past decade with significant basement discoveries. This paper provides a technical review of select basement oil and gas fields in Asia, Africa and the Americas. “Best practices” for exploring and developing basement fields are reviewed. Failures are also considered since basement reservoirs can be very complicated and unpredictable. Preference scale for basement reservoir rock types is presented. The opinion of this author is that the best rock types are fractured quartzites or granites since they are brittle and thus fracture optimally. Based on international experience, recommendations on the study of crystalline basement for oil and gas and the development of deposits in it are given.