They drilled thro' the upper play termed as Fan/Canyon & had...

They drilled thro' the upper play termed as Fan/Canyon & had shows albiet from thinnish sands & have deemed those as less lucrative (pg-2&3 frm FAR's qtrly). The JV continued to drill deeper towards the unconformity & intersected the Beer sands when the decision to TD at 4927m was made with no OWC intersected at that point.

As part of a stacked play there appears to b a high shale to sand ratio as seen in the 29m net out of 500m gross thickness.

Cairn acknowledged that they basically drilled in the wrong spot, but sussed out the source & found oil bearing sand blankets with variable API's oil. Hence the reason to go back to the basics & start tweaking the ampl's on the 3D to see where the best response comes from (ie, sweetspots).

Interestingly enough their recent preso's have shown a new 3Dseis amplitude map, where yellow/red color zones are possinly indicative of oil bearing lobes & the rest of the prospect has low ampl.

Needs a well to establish proper well control on the sub-surface indicators.

They should b able to sponsor a few master's dissertations, but will ask her nxt Wed what freq they've been peeling back the horizons (Hz or millisec's will do, ballpark).

This is a whole new area that falls under Seismic sequence stratigraphy & there r numerous case studies from all over the world where the operators undertook some clever detective work & nailed the exact 'lobe' kilometres from where they were originally looking along the channel.

Another thing that happens during deposition is the 'slump' in the seafloor where the sediments could lay hidden & can b identified by a typical 'gull-wing' anomaly.

COP can take up the reins for the deeper Fans & should b able to crack this, why!! Bcoz in their backyard, ie GOM they have many Fan structures/channels & incised valleys (Tertiary aged) courtesy of the Mississippi river which plies its sediments thro' Carbonate shelf into the deeper part of the gulf, as do most oil fields in the North sea (Jurassic aged).

Without proper well-control they r better off leaving it as STOIIP rather then divide it into sub-sets, mainly due to the uncertainities with regards to recovery, continuity of the sands along the entire basin floor & presence of oil in them etc.

Hope this makes sense.