Exploration works

In Belarus, the company is conducting geological exploration in the east of Pripyat Depression. The responsible subdivisions are the Department for Field Seismic Operations (DFSO), Svetlogorsk Department for Drilling Works (SDDW), Belarusian Scientific, Research and Design Oil Institute (BelNIPIneft).
Belarusian specialists provide for a high-quality package of prospecting and exploration works, ranging from field operations, processing and interpretation of seismic data to generation of geological and dynamic models for deposits.

Resource Base

By early 2012, there have been discovered 77 oil fields.
Initial potential recoverable oil resources in Belarus amount to 350.203 conventional units (c.u.). In general, their exploration maturity is 51.2%, while that of total oil resources – 35.3 %. Residual commercial resources of oil amount to 55.626 c.u., with active resources making up 30.388 c.u. Unexplored resources and Pripyat Depression oil reserves make up 170.799 c.u.

Operational Support

To provide for efficient combination of traditional methods and approaches with modern computer technologies in prospecting, exploration and development of oil fields a high-performance computation system for integrated processing of geological and geophysical data is used. It enables to carry out the entire sequence of operations, ranging from seismic surveys to oil fields development simulations.

On Possibilities of Seismic Exploration

Field seismic exploration support for Belorusneft is provided by the Department for Field Seismic Operations (DFSO), with its specialists working in Belarus, Russia and Venezuela.

DFSO Activities:

- 2D, 3D seismic design;
 — topographic and geodesic support for seismic surveys;
 — records of land seismic data;
 — shothole drilling;
 — vibroseis works;
 — surveys by the vertical seismic profiling polarization method;
 — geophysical equipment repairs and maintenance;
 — transport support for seismic operations;
 — control of seismic operations quality;
 — supervision.

Design of seismic surveys is ensured via modern equipment packages with use of latest Mesa software versions.
The 2D, 3D seismic surveys use explosion and vibroseis sources (SV30/120N manufactured by Seismotekhnika, OJSC) together with a 428 XL telemetry system (by Sercel) and field equipment, providing for 10,000 seismic channels (groups of ten GS-20DX units) and 2,500 channels for DSU-3 three-component (3C) digitizers. Navigation precision of the sources is ensured by application of GPS systems both in on-line and post-processing modes, while quality is monitored via a field computation system (SPW, Focus ver. 5.3, 5.4 software package).
Shot holes are drilled with use of URB-2A-2 and URB-4T units, with shothole charges set off via Pelton blast synchronization system complete with GPS.
Topographic and geodesic support for seismic surveys is ensured via GPS Pro XR and Trimble R8GNSS satellite navigation systems.
When conducting vertical seismic profiling surveys at exploration and production wells, the AMTs-VSP 3-48-M three-component telemetry system manufactured by Scientific and Production Company GITAS, JSC is used.

Seismic data processing and interpretation is carried out by the department for seismic data processing and storing and the seismic interpretation department of BElNIPIneft.
Seismic 2D and ĒD data are processed with use of Echos v1.0.1 and GeoDepth v8.2 software by Paradigm Company. The processing operations employ a SGI ALTIX XE 1300 56-processor server and 6 Arbyte graphic stations, while for seismic acquisition storing an HP DL580G5 server and a DotHill data storage are used, controlled by ProSouce SEISMIC module.

Seismic 2D and 3D (structural) interpretation is ensured via Petrel software product by Shlumberge company, while dynamic interpretations use software, such as Probe, Vanguard, Stratimagic by Paradigm Company, as well as independent Petre modules. Full-wave imaging is done via Tesseral software, while data obtained by the vertical seismic profiling polarization method are processed with Univers program module. Software for CDP 2D and 3D data processing is installed at Arbyte working stations in Windows and Linux environments, while that for vertical seismic profiling data – at PCs in Linux environment.

The specialists of the seismic interpretation department apply the above software to provide for high-qaulity 2D and 3D seismic data interpretation within time and depth area, structure map plotting and calibration, seismic attributes calculations and charting, identification of abnormal runtime parameters, forecasting of reservoir petrophysical parameters, seismic stratigraphy analysis and facies classification, processing and interpretation of borehole seismic acquisitions (VSP) as well as for geologic-geophysical support of drilling.