CHARACTERIZATION OF CHANNELS IN SEPAT FIELD IN RELATION TO
THE FLUVIAL SYSTEM IN MALAY BASIN
Tasvir Kaur Rajasansi a/p Harnar Singh
Bachelor of Technology (Hons)
Universiti Teknologi Petronas
Tronoh, Perak Darul Ridzuan
Email: misstasvir@gmail.com
Abstract - This study is focused on characterizing the channels in
Sepat Field of the Pleistocene to Recent group which starts from
time slice 100ms till 1100ms that covers Group A and Group B of
the area. Construction of the depositional environment of Sepat
Field is also modelled by relating it to the Malay Basin and the
Sunda Shelf. Channels characterization was carried out through
attributes application of time slices and frequency decomposition
that was adapted to further enhance the interpretation done on the
seismic data. Petrel was used for attributes application such as
variance and relative acoustic impedance whereas GeoTeric was
used for spectral decomposition. Sepat Field dominant frequency
is from 25Hz to 60Hz. Lower frequencies showed better
boundaries for wider channels and the higher frequency focuses
on narrow and thin channel beds. The number of channels that
could be observed at the shallow section of 100ms till 500ms was
in the range of 4 7 channels. The dimension of the channels
observed in Sepat Field differs from one to another. At shallow
surface starting from time -200ms many long channels with width
about 0.5km are observed with depth not exceeding 0.4km.
However, from time -90ms till -1600s a deep incised valley was
observed at the northeastern section with width of 0.65km and
depth of almost 1.5km. Well logs were used to interpret the type of
lithology found and electrofacies analysis helped in understanding
the depositional environment setting at certain stages. It was found
that Sepat field is dominated by meandering channels that flows
from northwest to southeast and from west to east. The
depositional setting for Sepat Field, Malay Basin is lower coastal
plain environment which belongs to a part of the larger Chao
Phraya Johore River that flows from Thailand down to South
China Sea.
Keywords- Sepat Field, fluvial characterization, spectral
decomposition, attributes, Malay Basin
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
Petroleum exploration in the Malay Basin began in
1968 and is now in a relatively mature stage [8]. The Malay
Basin is a northwest trending elongate basin about 500km
long and 250km wide and it contains over 12km or more of
Oligocene to Recent sediments [8]. The Oligocene sediments
are generally terrestrial deposits with minor marine influence,
whereas the Miocene Recent sediments are coastal plain to
shallow marine deposits [10]. As regard to Malay Basin, this
project focuses on the Sepat Field to characterize the channel
system environment and the depositional environment of the
area in relation to regional study of Malay Basin. Due to very
few literature have been published focusing on Sepat Field, the
Malay Basin is used as a focus for the literature review.
The deposition of sediments at Malay Basin is very
much influenced by the channels and rivers. The climate,
tectonic of an area, sediment types and the hydrology plays an
important role in determining the characteristics and features of
the channels. Channel architectures in a fluvial system are
controlled by many factors that are [16]:
a) The upstream controls which are affected by the climate,
tectonics, and lithology of the source area
b) The local controls that include the active tectonics, channel
morphology, vegetation and type of bedrock
c) The downstream controls that are affected by the length of
upstream extent and base level fluctuations.
Syn depositional tectonics, climate, and base level
variationns are the most significant factors among the others to
influence the overall fluvial channel architecture and size [16].
Accommodation space creation is very much affected by the
tectonics be it uplift or subsidence and the base level
fluctuation. These factors determine the depositional event such
as progradation, regression or transgression that is usually
represented by sequence stratigraphy.
Many oil and gas fields in the world are found
deposited in the fluvial environment that serves as stratigraphic
traps. Malay Basin is one of the examples where many
discoveries are found within the fluvial environment. Sepat
Field, located in Malay Basin is hence used to study the
characteristic of the channels regarding the larger fluvial system
of Malay Basin.
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
The problem with detection of the fluvial environment is that
they are very often below seismic temporal resolution with the
natural characteristic of rivers as they behave by either
meandering, branching out or showing dendritic flow pattern.
The fluvial detection in Sepat Field is made even harder by the
existence of gas cloud in the middle of Sepat Field that have
degraded the seismic data quality. Utilization of techniques
such as seismic attribute and frequency decomposition aims to
focus and enhance the visualization for a better interpretation.
Well log studies aim to give better understanding on the
lithological information and energy of deposition that provides
the deposition setting of an area.
1.3 OBJECTIVE
This main objective that is focused in this study is the
characterization of channels in Sepat Field with relation to
Malay Basin focused on seismic data with the help of well log
analyses. The sub objectives of this study are as following:
i. To characterize the fluvial system environment in
Sepat Field for correlation with Malay Basin
ii. To construct the depositional environment model
of Sepat Field, Malay Basin
1.4 SCOPE OF STUDY
This research is focusing on the Sepat Field, Malay
Basin. The stratigraphic characterization requires certain
analysis to achieve and obtain crucial information. In this study,
the analysis is focused on the seismic data interpretation and
well log study. The area focused in the study is from Group A
to Group B of the Pliocene Recent according to the
stratigraphy of Malay Basin. This research study is done on a
cropped 3D raw seismic data together with the well data for
well Sepat 3, Sepat 8, Sepat Barat 1 and Sepat Deep 1. The key
software used for this study is Petrel E&P Software Platform by
Schlumberger and GeoTeric 2016.
Fig 1: Location of Sepat Field in Malay Basin
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 TECTONIC EVOLUTION OF THE MALAY BASIN
The Malay Basin is situated at the center of Sundaland,
the cratonic core of Southeast Asia. It elongates from NW SE
and spreads a zone of around 500km long and 250km wide. It
is found seaward in the South China Sea, east of Peninsular
Malaysia with the latitude of 4 8 N and longitude of 102 106
E [11]. It is one of the deepest continental extensional basins in
the region and the biggest among the hydrocarbon bearing
Tertiary basin of the Sunda Shelf. The Tenggol Arch isolates
the Malay Basin from Penyu Basin, while the Narathiwat High
separates the Malay Basin from Thailands Pattani Basin [8].
The collision of Indian Plate into Eurasia during
Eocene followed by subsequent extrusion of the lithospheric
blocks towards Indochina resulted in huge number of major
fault system and related basins such as the formation of the
Southeast Asia mainland plate as an event of the tectonic
configuration [8] [12] [14] [18]. Most of the basins that
occurred after this event are mainly bounded by faults on which
extensional dip slip and strike slip are predominant.
Malay Basin has gone through three major tectonic
events that form the observed structure in the basin today. The
first tectonic event was extension phase started during Late
Cretaceous to Early Miocene followed by the second event, the
thermal subsidence which took place from Early Miocene to
Middle Miocene and the last tectonic event was compression
stage which happened from Late Miocene to Pliocene. The
Malay basin experienced inversion during the Middle to Late
Miocene, which took place during the 3rd tectonic event, the
compression stage.
The result of basin inversion is seen by the structural
evidence such as the compressional anticlines, inverted and
uplifted half graben and reverse throws on the half graben
normal faults [19]. The inversion affected the center of the flank
deeply compared to the basin flank. Inversion also increases in
the intensity toward the southeast. The development of a large
wrench induced compressional anticline, mostly within the
axial region of the basin was also the result of the basin
inversion. The formation on inversion anticlines over the half
grabens also occurred during the basin inversion phase which
is NW trending dextral shear [19].
2.2 GEOLOGY OF MALAY BASIN AND SEPAT FIELD
The Malay basin strata are subdivided into seismo-
stratigraphic units that are referred as groups. The groups are
named according to an alphabetical order, starting with group
A, the youngest and ending with group M being the oldest [4].
Sepat Field is in the Malay Basin and it is a producing
gas field. Its located in Block PM 313 about 180km northeast
of Kertih, Terengganu. Exxon Production Malaysia
Incorporated (EPMI) discovered the Sepat Field in 1970 when
the Sepat 1 well was drilled. The Sepat Field structure is an
east west elongated anticline with a four-way dip closure and
numerous gas reservoirs was encountered mainly within the
Middle Miocene, Group D and E (Sepat 3 well report). The
structure in this field is dated to be from Middle Miocene to
Upper Miocene. The field is faulted by seventeen faults (Sepat
3 well report) and is probably related to the transgressional
movements (NW trending dextral shear) along basement
faults such as the Axial Malay Fault Zone [8].
The Sepat Field stratigraphy consists of the younger
group (Group B, D, and E) and older group (Group F and H).
The B group is the youngest stratigraphic level, which is of the
Upper Miocene to Pliocene in age, Group D of Middle Miocene
followed by Group E of about the same age [4]. This project
will be focused on Group A and B (Pliocene Recent) as the
observation of fluvial channels at the shallow sections is clear
compared to the older sections.
METHODOLOGY
A 3D cropped data of Sepat Field focusing on Group A and
Group B was used. The main techniques used in
characterization of fluvial channels was attributes application
and spectral decomposition. Well log analysis or electrofacies
analysis was for lithology identification and determination of
the depositional setting.
3.1 SEISMIC ATTRIBUTES
Seismic attributes are used to gather information regarding
different aspects of geology, as it is able to measure, extract or
enhance specific characteristic of the data independently.
Certain seismic attribute can only reveal certain structures and
zone of interest. In this study, variance and relative acoustic
impedance were applied.
3.1.1 Variance - Variance attributes was used as the main
attribute in this study. Variance is the opposite of coherence
attribute where variance detects discontinuities that produce
trace to trace variability but coherence detects the trace
trace similarity of the seismic waveform. The volume that have
been applied with variance was used to tract the fluvial
channels.
3.1.2 Relative Acoustic Impedance - Relative acoustic
impedance was also applied to show better boundary of the
channels. Relative acoustic impedance measures the running
sum of the trace to which a low-cut filter is applied where is it
applied to remove DC shift which is typical in impedance data
[26]. The calculated trace is composed of the simple integration
of the complex trace and represents the approximation of the
high frequency component of the relative acoustic impedance.
Therefore, relative acoustic impedance helped in detection of
thin channels beds at very limited area.
3.2 SPECTRAL DECOMPOSITION
Frequency decomposition replaces the single input trace
with a gather of traces corresponding to the spectral
decomposition of the input attribute. The raw seismic volume
is used as an input and the output is a few volumes with
different frequency band as the user defined. Spectral
decomposition allows discrete frequency responses to be
isolated and combined with red, green and blue (RGB) blending
that allows detection of structures which have different
frequency bands as resolution thickness depends on the
wavelength. Lower frequency has longer wavelength that
produce thicker tuning thickness and higher frequency has
shorter wavelength that produce thinner tuning thickness.
Therefore, it is necessary for the presence of both low and high
frequency to ensure thick beds and thin beds are detected
respectively. The band limited volumes created in this study
consist of 30Hz, 40Hz and 50Hz of red, green and blue
respectively.
Fig 2: Spectral Decomposition Workflow
RGB blending is very useful and have been widely used to
enhance the visualization especially in seismic. Colour blend
technique is used to form a composite display of the three
output volumes produced from spectral decomposition that is
of the three primary colours, red, green and blue of magnitude
30Hz, 40Hz and 50Hz respectively. The intensity of each
primary colour represents the intensity of the certain features or
attribute. The three main axes of red, blue and green define the
monochromatic primary colour scales and channels with RGB
blend can represent eight bits of information each that provides
a composite RGB blend a total colour depth of 24 bits. [27] This
provides a higher level of visual output and hence, when used
with attributes, it encodes more information and signify greater
level of details observed. [27] Magenta, cyan and yellow is
another colour blend that is used for structural detection rather
than stratigraphic detection.

Fig 3: Primary colour of red, blue and green situated at primary axes
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
A) CHARACTERIZATION OF FLUVIAL CHANNEL
4.1 Volume Attributes
Time slice 108ms and 225ms was chosen to represent the
channels in Sepat Field. At time 108ms, a well-developed
meandering channel could be observed and it was enhanced by
the application of the attributes. Using relative acoustic
impedance, shown in Fig 4 (A) the point bars and the tributaries
channels were displayed in detailed. Variance on the other hand
displayed in Fig 4 (B) shows clear boundary of the channel but
not much on the tributaries and point bar probably due to lack
of heterogeneity from trace to trace at the shallow section.
A
Point bars
Thin tributaries
channels
Point bars
B
Thin tributaries
channels
Fig 4 shows time slice 108ms (A) that have been applied with RAI Figure 28
(B) that is applied with variance. Relative acoustic impedance is more useful
in detection of thinner beds than variance.
As it moves to time slice 225ms and deeper, variance showed
more significant in tracing the channels. As shown in Fig 5 (B)
many channels cross cutting each other are observed while in
Fig 5 (A), the body of the main channels are less defined far
from detecting the rest of the channels. Hence, the study using
volume attributes was more focused to variance attributes from
time 108ms till 1062ms and the findings are summarized under
section 4.3.
B
Fig 5 shows timeslice 225ms (A) have been applied with RAI while Figure 29
(B) have been applied with variance that has significant difference.
4.2 Spectral Decomposition and Colour Blending
Sepat Field experience the effects of gas cloud at the
center that degraded the quality of the seismic data. RGB blend
reveals geological features in seismic data much more clearly
than a single attribute. It highlights the variations, heterogeneity
or differences within an entity and allows detection with similar
amplitude characteristic. RGB blend uses output volumes from
spectral decomposition. The output volumes from spectral
decomposition are as shown in Fig 6 (A), (B) and (C) with a
frequency band of 30Hz, 40Hz and 50Hz respectively. These
three output volumes are then combined using the colour
blending technique to produce a RGB volume as shown in Fig.
D.
Each of these figure shows differences in channel
enhancement. The yellow, red and black box represents clear,
medium and blur image respectively. Fig 6 (A) shows wider
channels that can be detected and revealed channel 1 the
clearest followed by (B) and it is undetectable at (C). Fig 6 (B)
gave a medium representation of the three channels and all
features was shown as satisfactory. Fig 6 (C) represented
channel 2 body with most precision which is also true for
channel 3. An ideal frequency would be 40Hz as it is able to
show all the channels without drastic changes. However, due to
these reasons, spectral decomposition is necessary to enable
detection of certain features under different tuning thickness.
The RGB blend is shown in Fig 6 (D). The features
that could not be viewed in separate frequencies can be viewed
in RGB volume. Long meandering channels are observed with
point bars followed by straight channel and two tributaries that
combined to flow as one main channel. An oxbow lake is also
traced that would have been cut from the main stream due to
rapid flow of the river.
A flow and as the source of sediments to the Malay Basin.
(30H
1
4.3 Result gathering
Geophysical techniques have helped in enhancing the
detection of channels observed on a few time slices in Sepat
Field. These techniques helped in the detection of channel flow
orientation, the channel dimension, type of channels and
revealing thin channels. The analysis carried out on eleven time
slices from 108ms till 1062 ms have shown that the dominant
river flow is from northwestern to southeastern which is
affected by the Thailand higher ground. The Chao Phraya River
is the main conduit for the flow of sediments from the
continental to offshore. The Chao Phraya River flows through
the axial Malay Basin as shown in Fig 7. The rivers in Sepat
Field is also seen to flow from west to east due to the location
of eastern mountains on Peninsula Malaysia that affected the
A
Upstream

2
3

B Midstream
(40H
1

Downstream
2
3

C
(50H

1
Fig. 7 shows the flow of the Chao Phraya Johore River from upstream,
midstream and reaches the downstream. Malay Basin is located at the
2 midstream section
3
The type of the channels that can be observed in Sepat
Field are mostly meandering channels with different sinuosity
Oxbow D level with a few straight channels were. Major channels as
shown in Fig 6 (D) shows high sinuosity level whereas the rest
shows lower sinuosity level. Well-developed point bars and
oxbow lake were also traced that represents the characteristic
of meandering channels. Meandering channels are mostly
found in lower coast plain and have deposits of fining upwards
Straight sequence. The lithology identification was done with
channels Meandering channels correlation to the well data of Sepat 3, Sepat 8, Sepat Deep
1 and Sepat Barat 1. It shows silty sand and shale dominated
Fig 6 (A), (B) and (C) is showing output volume of 30Hz, 40Hz and 50Hz the shallow surface that indicates low energy of deposition.
from spectral decomposition respectively. (D) represents the RGB volume
The dimension of the channels showed no similar
trends however, most of the channels detected on the shallow
surface were long with shallow depth. One deep incised valley
was tracked at the northeast section of the Sepat Field that
displays a hook shaped meandering channel as shown in Fig
Noring Sepat Chao
8. It can be detected from time 90s to about 1400s that is about Phraya B
1.4km deep. Based on interpretation, it might be a part of the Johore
major trunk channel of the Late Pleistocene river [1] which is River
further described in section 4.4. There were many thin Inas
tributaries channels that were observed around the major
Bujang Deep 1
channels.

Meander scrolls/ Point bar

50 km

Tributaries
Channel A

Indication
of deep
incised
valley
Fig.8 Time slice at 108 twt shows a highly sinuous channel, which is flowing
from north to south. It shows the characteristic of deep incised valley and can
be tracked up till time slice -1400 twt. Point bars are well developed that
gives bright amplitudes.
4.4 The Late Pleistocene Channel and Depositional
Environment
The study done on the Late Pleistocene incised valley in
Malay Basin was focused on time 108ms hence, 108ms was
analyzed in this study [1]. At the northeast section of Sepat
Field, a hook shaped meandering river that is deeply incised
as shown in Fig 8 is tracked. That hook shaped channels were
then correlated with Fig 9 (A) and interpretation in Fig 9 (B)
was deduced. It indicates a high possibility that the hook river
is a part of the major trunk river or the deep incised valley that
was mentioned in the literature.
Based on Fig 7 and Fig 9, the depositional environment for
Sepat Field was developed as shown in Fig 10. The location of
higher ground was Thailand (continental) that flowed a major
trunk river, the Chao Phraya Johore River. The upstream area
was represented by Gulf of Thailand, flowing down to
midstream section at where Malay Basin is located and further
downward where it discharges into South China Sea.
Fig 9: (A) shows the merged 3D dataset of the Malay Basin with the
location of Sepat Field. The two blue lines in (A) represent the valley margins
that bound the large meandering channel observed in literature [1].. The red
box in (A) is later interpreted as shown in (B) that focuses the connectivity of
the trunk channel from Sepat field to the rest of the data and it shows a good
continuity of the Chao Phraya Johore River.
Thailand highland
hinterland
Upstream
Chao Phraya
River into
Pattani Basin Midstream -
Malay Basin
Downstream -
Sepat Field
location, axial South China Sea
Malay Basin
Figure 10: General depositional environment that covers the highland,
upstream, midstream and downstream which is done by referring to literature
[1]
CONCLUSION
The characterization of fluvial channel in Sepat Field was
achieved by applying geophysical technique mainly focusing
on attributes application. The application of seismic attributes
in characterizing stratigraphic features have shown its
effectivity following the presence of gas cloud. The
interpretation that was done using variance attributes was
compared with spectral decomposition that enhanced the
interpretation further with no major differences. The fluvial
channel in Sepat Field have two major dominant flow of
direction which is from northwest to southeast and west to
south. The channels in Sepat Field can be classified to two type
i) deep incised valley or meandering channels with high
sinuosity and ii) weakly incised valley or straight channels with
low sinuosity. The meandering channels in Sepat Field have
well developed point bars that is clearly observed in the time
slices. The dominant lithology found at the shallow surface are
shale and silt that are deposits of a low energy environment that
was extracted from well log data. The deep incised valley that
is tracked on the northeastern section of Sepat Field is
interpreted to be a part of the large deep incised valley of the
Chao Phraya Johore River.
FURTHER STUDY
The future recommendation for this research would be
to comprehend the usage of geobody interpretation to observe
the exact shape and dimension of the channels instead of
measuring the channels using the ruler tool in software.
Geobody tool would be able to represent channels in 3
dimensions. Next, the development of a complete sequence
stratigraphic for Sepat Field could upgrade the results of this
study. Sequence stratigraphy study should be carried out on
seismic data, well log and core log data would be able to give
information on the sea level changes and how it impacted the
fluvial morphology. This would be very useful to further
develop a detailed depositional environment that focuses
mainly on the Sepat Field.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank my supervisor, Mrs Siti Nur Fathiyah
Jamaluddin for constantly guiding me throughout this project.
She always made sure that the project was always going on
track and suggested many ideas of improvement for this
project. I would like to extend my appreciation to my internal
supervisor and other lecturers that gave comments for further
improvement for the betterment of the project. Special
appreciation to PETRONAS and Malaysian Petroleum
Management (MPM) for granting permission for the usage of
the 3D seismic dataset together with well logs data and core
images. Finally, I extend my heartiest gratitude and
appreciation to my family and friends who have always stood
by me and gave me moral support throughout my
undergraduate study.
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