Delineating Reservoir Sweetspots and Optimizing Infill Drilling Targets in the Early Jurassic Middle Marrat Formation, Kuwait

Summary To support Kuwait Oil Company’s (KOC) goal of ramping up gas production from the North Kuwait Jurassic Gas Asset (NKJG), strong focus is put on the identification and delineation of reservoir sweetspots, which in carbonate reservoirs are governed by the interplay of depositional, diagenetic, and structural processes. We present an integrated core-based workflow to define and delineate sweetspots in tight gas reservoirs of the Jurassic Middle Marrat Formation. A multi-scale approach to sweetspot identification was applied, combining Shell’s expertise in carbonate geology and machine learning. Traditional core-based studies were integrated with legacy datasets (including stratigraphy, petrophysical, and dynamic data) and standardized and fully utilized using an in-house developed AI-based core interpretation tool. Within the reservoir zone of interest two main sweet spots were identified as potential storage and flow units respectively. The detailed reconstruction of the temporal and spatial evolution of the depositional and diagenetic elements provided guidelines for their distribution and recommendations on how to optimize horizontal well placement, guide infill and appraisal drilling, and inform well-path and completion design for the reservoir zone of interest.