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1 Dickson International Geosciences (DIGs), 12503 Exchange Drive, Suite 510A, Stafford, Texas 77477, USA
2 Consulting Exploration Geologist, Houston, Texas 77042, USA
3 GETECH Inc. (Geophysical Exploration Technology), Stafford, Texas 77477, USA
The Lower Congo Basin and Congo Fan of Angola contain giant oil discoveries in Oligocene & Miocene deep-water sands; the Late Cretaceous and Tertiary fans in the Campos Basin of Brazil contain some 90% of Brazil’s reserves. Petroleum exploration in these vast, deep-water regions is resource-hungry, increasing the value of techniques that facilitate quick and inexpensive extrapolation from discoveries into undrilled areas. Our work demonstrates a strong correlation in these basins between reservoir fairways and various attributes of the gravity signature. We provide comparisons between published interpretations based on well and seismic data and our interpretations of gravity attribute images. We demonstrate the use of geographic information systems (GIS) techniques to facilitate the comparisons, discuss the possible basis for these correlations and speculate on their application to other basins. We conclude with notes on current research to improve the resolution of the gravity data and future refinements to our processing and interpretation methods.
