Next Generation High Resolution Airborne Gravity Reconnaissance in Oil Field Exploration

Abstract

Simple modelling studies of gravity fields using elementary structural forms, oilfield-type structures and geological reconnaissance situations, show that gravity gradiometry technology offers significant petroleum exploration potential. In geological environments of interest, gravity gradients are primarily due to density displacement along (near) vertical boundaries. Gradient images therefore reveal the edges and corners of intrusions, faults, fault intersections, and other such structures often associated with hydrocarbon migration pathways and traps, and/or significant basinal trends. Recent technological advances may make gravity gradiometry an airborne reconnaissance tool capable of providing sensitivity and resolution superior to the best gravimetry available today. This capacity, and the array of gradient components that may be measured, will embellish aspects of the gravity field important to developing regional geologic interpretations. While the potential advantage of gravity gradiometry is greater lateral resolution and sensitivity from a moving platform, the disadvantage is the high sensitivity to topographic and shallow buried irregularities unrelated to the deeper geological structures of interest. A further difficulty is the complex gravity field representations produced for density structures of certain geometries. Buried features that have near surface expressions will be easiest to map. However, full use of gravity gradient technology will require application-focused data processing techniques and new interpretation skills. When the technology becomes commercially available it could find application in preseismic reconnaissance, structural (and possibly stratigraphic) mapping, acreage management and assessment, and in the evolution and mapping of controls on oilfield distribution. The technology could help develop exploration in remote and inaccessible areas, and provide a new look at well-explored regions. An immediate practical implementation appears to be in offshore exploration applications, possibly linked to deepwater exploitation strategies.