TotalEnergies has announced a significant light oil discovery at the Kokerboom-1 deepwater exploration well in the Orange Basin, offshore Namibia. The breakthrough was enabled by a proprietary multi-parameter Full-Waveform Inversion (FWI) workflow applied to recently acquired Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) data.
Previous imaging attempts were heavily obscured by attenuating, rugose Cretaceous volcanic sills overlying the target reservoir. By extending the low-frequency source signal to 1.5 Hz and updating both velocity and attenuation models simultaneously, the operator resolved the complex sub-basalt trap geometry. The well encountered 85 metres of net pay in high-porosity Aptian-Albian sandstones. This demonstrates the critical operational value of ultra-low frequency OBN acquisition combined with advanced FWI in unlocking sub-basalt plays.
