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Seismic integration has been a successful accessory in every data interpretation project. For shale gas exploration design, development and implementation, high-resolution seismic data are necessitated. In this context, every exploration project needs multi-disciplinary datasets and their integration that can minimize the ambiguity of the interpretative outcomes. What are the integrated solutions for imaging and interpreting shale gas and how do they impact our shale prospect business? How do we organize and standardize our integrated workflows to address issues of exploration, field development, including drilling campaigns of the unconventional reservoirs? So far, the conventional reservoirs of many worldwide basins did produce even without integrated workflows. With the increase in intricacy in structural and stratigraphic settings, in particular with the fractured shale environments, exploration and field development plans have become multifaceted, complicating the field operations. How do we take on the exploration, development and drilling campaign decisions using the integrated seismic solutions? How do we suggest the “integrated solutions” to our valued operators and service providers? Why are the conventional technologies failures and setbacks? How can we guide and recommend the petroleum companies on appropriate technologies and the reserve computations in shale environments? We come up with an “Integrated Seismic” (IS) strategy, addressing the issues and challenges. The applicability and feasibility of IS in various exploration projects including their execution and implementation in worldwide shale gas basins are discussed. IS has been playing a vital role, making huge impacts on the integrated interpretation projects, especially during prospect identification and risk evaluation stages.

Several issues associated with existing velocity models and their anomalies affecting the petroleum geology of the offshore Nile Delta basin are described. The paper aims to present velocity and pressure variations and their associated pitfalls in the deeper Nile Delta, where the ambiguities exist in the interpretation of depth structures, especially in between sea bottom and Oligocene sequences. Different conceptualized geological, velocity, and seismic models are generated. We make use of data cubes to generate data views for geological interpretation. The connectivity is established between velocity anomalies and corresponding seismic times, ascertaining that the depth structures have geological implications. The visualization of representative schematic data views of velocity anomalies facilitates the interpretation of new knowledge and the connectivity between seismic and geological models. The velocity attributes significantly influence the seismic data interpretation in the offshore Nile Delta basin and have an impact on the overall cycle of the exploration and production entities.

This study investigated seasonal variation, spatial distribution, sources, composition and potential ecological risks of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Red Sea coastal water. Surface seawater samples were collected at fourteen different locations. The sum of 16 PAHs concentrations in Red Sea showed clear variation between seasons, ranged from 1.08–6.10, 0.79–50.86, 1.37–54.47 and 0.21–7.18 μg/L in summer, autumn, winter, and spring respectively. PAHs levels in Red Sea coastal waters were relatively high at certain sites during autumn and winter seasons. They could be classified as highly polluted by PAHs contaminants (&gt, 10 μg/L). According to the diagnostic ratios measured, the majority of PAHs in this study originated from pyrogenic sources, while minor amounts originated from petrogenic sources. Four rings PAHs accounted for more than 64% of the total PAHs studied. PAHs pose a high ecological risk along the period of study, according to the ecological risk assessment by Risk quotients (RQNCs and RQMPCs).

The offshore Nile Delta region has huge exploration potential, keeping in view the existing commercial oil and gas fields in and around this basin. The majority of the offshore Nile Delta basin is underexplored. Sparsity of geophysical data coverage and ambiguity in the interpretation of existing geophysical data have held back the exploration for many decades. In order to assess and evaluate the exploration potential, it is important to estimate the depth to the basement, the nature of basement and its topography. Identifying the basement reflector based on the current seismic data is challenging, because of limitations of the resolution and record length of the seismic data. Moreover, an estimation of sedimentary column is paramount for further detailed geological and geophysical investigations. The objective of the research is to perform seismic forward modelling of the basement reflector, guided by gravity and magnetic field data, and minimize the ambiguity involved in a single geophysical method of interpretation. The geophysical properties and their contrasts derived from seismic, gravity and magnetic methods of exploration are various criteria used in the integration and modelling process. Seismic stacking velocity data and depth values interpreted from gravity and magnetic field data are used in the modelling process. The uncertainty in modelling the basement character is assessed based on the stacking velocities and seismo-geological cross-sections interpreted from 2D seismic data, instead of cross-sections obtained from unreliable seismically derived depth data. The analysis of errors observed in the seismic data due to younger layer-cake reflections interfering with the basement reflector are analysed and the observed errors in the velocity models are accordingly reconciled based on the potential field data. The potential field data interpretation guiding the seismic forward modelling facilitates the redesign process of seismic data acquisition and processing in the hugely unexplored offshore Nile Delta basin in Egypt.

Volumes of geological and geophysical (G & G) data sources exist in the Nile Delta basin, covering approximately 60,000 km2 in both onshore and offshore areas. Although several varieties of data continue to support the exploration and field development activities in the basin, the Big Data sources are largely unstructured, heterogeneous and multidimensional. Connecting various G & G events of onshore-transition-offshore zones and integrating them into a single repository is a complicated process. The authors proposed a holistic data warehousing and mining methodology that can support logical and physical data organization, easing the data integration process in the warehouse repository. In addition, an implementable framework, the Nile Delta Digital Petroleum Ecosystem (NDDPE) was articulated, assessing its usability and interoperability with associated data artefacts. The NDDPE can deliver Big Data guided digital ecosystem solutions that can minimize the risk of exploration.

Data heterogeneity and multidimensionality are major challenges when dealing with the integration of exploration data sources in the frontier basins. We took advantage of the fact that the geology and geophysics (G & G) do not have boundaries either with the continents or their associated countries. Frontier basins may have generated enormous digital-data on geological structures and reservoirs in areas where the continents and their tectonic plates drifted. The digital data are indeed in Big Data scale, characterized by volumes and varieties in spatial dimensions that may have emerged in the form of conceptualization and contextualization attributes. The frontier basin research thus needs knowledge-based ecosystems, with entities, dimensions and their logical data models interpreted in geo-informatics focus. An integrated framework is proposed, generating a multidimensional metadata structure for meta-knowledge. The meta-knowledge derivable from metadata models can immensely be useful in interpreting the connectivity between G & G events and assessing the hydrocarbon potential of frontier basins. The metadata models are made so flexible as to be extended and implemented in worldwide super basins.

The study area lies around the petroleum provinces of the Egyptian Offshore Nile Delta basin. The existing exploration data are sparse, and any effort made on the strati-structural interpretation is challenging for exploratory drilling campaigns, even with meager well control. Keeping in view the issues and major challenges, the authors propose new methodologies, tools and new insights into the interpretation of the existing data and information, to make the study area more attractive for investors and detailed exploration studies. The published geological work existing within the vicinity of the study area is an added value to the new insights of current interpretation and knowledge acquisition. Pliocene–Pleistocene section is the main target in the study area, since it has quality reservoirs, holding commercial hydrocarbons. Pre-salt source rocks may have charged the reservoirs in the study area. Structural complexities and heterogeneities at target levels are likely to impact the seismic wavelet property intricacies and thus the data processing qualities. Post- and pre-salt tectonics in the northern part of Sinai, the Nile Cone, and how they affect the structural framework and the seismic interpretation work in the study area are described. For the purpose of understanding the combinational trapping mechanism, stratigraphic features and the structural geology are integrated using new tools and technologies. Several strati-structural plays are interpreted in the study area that support the detailed exploration campaigns, and the existing major hydrocarbon plays associated within shelf, slope and deep-marine geological events in nearby offshore regions. Diapir salt, rotated fault blocks and growth faults within syn-sediment systems are other plays to be investigated. The study is an effort of compiled work from many published sources, putting all ideas into a positive perspective and has better understanding of new opportunities, leads and prospects for investment purposes in the Nile Delta offshore basin.

Interpretation of 2500 km of newly processed 2D seismic and regional potential field data has led to the identification of two new Miocene–Oligocene sedimentary basins in the northern part of offshore Egypt. The western part of the basin is deeper and has thick sedimentary cover. The upper part of the Miocene section is tested in its southern part through two wells, where the eastern subbasin is still virgin and is located at the intersection between Temsah basins and southeastern end of the Levantine basin. The main sedimentary unit of the basin is the Miocene–Oligocene sedimentary section, which was proven by the exploration and production activities in Nile Delta to be one of the hydrocarbon-generating facies. This fact is supported by 1D basin analysis using the average parameter values, which shows a hydrocarbon window, extending from lower Miocene to upper Miocene. The basin dimensions are more than 2000 km2 area and more than 4000 m of thickness, with variable petroleum system parameters’ potentialities, starting from Tortonian–Serravallian to lower Oligocene section.