Unlocking the Downthrown Potential of Mature Brown Fields, A Success Story from Amal Field, Gulf of Suez Rift, Egypt

The Gulf of Suez rift basin continues to unveil its secrets with each new discovery. Among these discoveries, the Amal field, with more than thirty years of production, stands out as a significant brown mature field that recently revealed a downthrown oil discovery of a prolific structure trend (B-trend fault) in the offshore southern province. While this discovery bears some resemblance to other analogues of proven downthrown fields, it holds a unique distinction. Specifically, the oil-water contact in this discovery is located even deeper than the up-thrown contact in the main field by over 200 meters within the same reservoir. Moreover, it is deeper than the deepest recorded oil-water contact in the main field by 80 meters, a phenomenon not previously observed in similar downthrown traps. This paper provides a comprehensive workflow that has been integrated prior to this discovery, highlighting the associated risks. The paper also addresses the challenges regarding the poor seismic data quality that hinders the better subsurface reservoir structure image and explains how the integration of all available data has helped to overcome this limitation. Despite being a remarkable success story, the drilling results revealed valuable lessons learned and unexpected risks that should also be considered in future prospect evaluations. This remarkable discovery encourages additional near-field exploration in other mature brownfield locations across the entire Gulf of Suez rift, as it demonstrates the hydrocarbon potential within downthrown traps. Additionally, the discovery has the potential to reshape exploration strategies, particularly to the significant bounding faults that encompass extensive undrilled regions within development leases.