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3D Seismic Characterization of the Arbuckle Group in the Wellington Field, South-Central Kansas
Tsiboe, Mary Ama
Tsiboe, Mary Ama
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Abstract
The Upper Cambrian and Lower Ordovician Arbuckle Group in the Wellington Field, south-central Kansas, a saline aquifer used for wastewater disposal, is a potential candidate for carbon sequestration operations in the U.S. Mid-continent region. It is composed primarily of dolostones and some incursion of detrital clays which have considerable porosity, modified by dolomitization, karsting, fracturing, and hydrothermal alteration. This study focuses on the seismic characterization of the Arbuckle by utilizing 2016 reprocessed 3D poststack and prestack time migrated (PSTM) seismic data at Wellington Field, covering approximately 23 Km2. It incorporates borehole measurements from KGS 1-32 and KGS 1-28, and core data from KGS 1-32.
A Stratigraphic Modified Lorenz Plot (SMLP) was generated from KGS 1-32 core data within the approximately 300 m Arbuckle interval and identified 26 flow units with varying thicknesses from 0.43 m to 53.3 m. These flow units were subsequently grouped into 10 major hydraulic zones to match the vertical resolution of the seismic data which is approximately 30 m. The seismic analysis revealed karst features, two intra-Arbuckle unconformities, and small offset faults with predominant orientations; north-northeast to south-southwest (NNE- SSW) being dominant and a few in the northwest-southeast (NW-SE) aligning with the structural orientation of the Precambrian basement of Kansas (Baars, 1995).
The study also involved model-based poststack and simultaneous seismic inversion methods to correlate seismic interpretations with well data-derived petrophysical properties of the Arbuckle. A major baffle unit (Zone 3) identified from core data matched a high impedance zone in the p-impedance volumes generated from both inversion methods. The simultaneous inversion method revealed more heterogeneity within the Arbuckle.
Five permeable Zones, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9 matched the low impedance areas from the simultaneous inversion p- impedance, with Zone 2 in Upper Arbuckle, Zone 6 in Mid Arbuckle and the remaining in Lower Arbuckle (Figure 1). An average porosity volume was generated using KGS 1-32 and KGS 1-28 average well logs from sonic, neutron and density porosity logs, acoustic impedance from seismic inversion and probabilistic neural network techniques.
Using a porosity limit of 4.3%, geobodies were extracted from high and low porosity zones which helped in understanding the spatial coverage of the reservoir and baffle zones within the Arbuckle (Figure 2). The density of CO₂ predicted using the NIST web database was higher within the lower Arbuckle at 623.56 Kg/m3 compared to the Upper Arbuckle at 26.63 Kg/m3.This showed that CO₂ reaches supercritical conditions in the Lower Arbuckle, which is more efficient for CO₂ storage, and maximizes the amount of CO₂ that can be stored in the available pore volume. The Flow zones, karst, faults and geobodies extracted improved the understanding of the heterogeneity of the Arbuckle Group in the Wellington Field.
Description
These are the slides from a presentation given at the International Meeting for Applied Geoscience & Energy (IMAGE) held in Houston, Texas on 08/27/2025.
Date
2025-08-27
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University of Kansas
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TsiboeM_2025.pdf
Adobe PDF, 20.31 MB