**Just Announced - The September meeting will be virtual only. Our sponsor, TGS has temporarily suspended onsite meetings due to the recent spike in COVID. We hope to offer hybrid meetings once COVID subsides in the Houston area.

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Meeting presentation will be from 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm

Speaker: Xavier E. Refunjol, Ecopetrol 
Co-Author's: Bradley C. Wallet†, and John P. Castagna*
∗University of Houston, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Houston, TX
†Aramco Services Company, Aramco Research Center, Houston, TX

Compaction effects can obscure the impedance separation between hydrocarbon-bearing and fully brine-saturated sandstones. We improve discrimination by removing depth-related trends from inverted seismic impedance. Although the ratio of compressional-to-shear wave velocity versus seismic compressional-wave impedance cross plots show differences between pay, brine sand, and shale trends, using absolute inverted impedances only imperfectly distinguishes hydrocarbon sands from brine sands due to outliers. In a given locality, statistical comparison of well log and seismic-derived impedances enables us to obtain a shale impedance model for a lithology baseline to de-trend the impedance from the effects of burial and overburden. This has the effect of unmasking anomalies associated with hydrocarbon-bearing sands and serves as a reliable fluid discriminator. For an offshore Gulf of Mexico dataset on the flank of a salt dome, with pay occurring over a wide range of depths, we identify hydrocarbon-bearing sands with a greater success rate after de-trending the absolute seismic impedance.

Speaker Biography: Xavier Refunjol, Ecopetrol
Xavier Refunjol recently joined Ecopetrol’s Permian team as a Development Geophysicist from the Deepwater Mexico Exploration team, where he worked as a Senior Exploration Geoscientist.  He has 10+ years of experience in unconventional and conventional plays in both development and exploration. Xavier specializes in seismic and quantitative interpretation, seismic attributes, and multidisciplinary reservoir characterization, geared to identifying, maturing, and risking prospects, as well as planning and executing exploration and development programs.
 
Xavier obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma under Dr. Kurt Marfurt and recently, his Doctorate from the University of Houston under Dr. John Castagna. He enjoys exploring the unusual corners of the world, snowboarding, surfing, and hiking with his wife Aliya and their dog Luna.

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