There is a renewed interest in exploration for oil and gas in deep and shallow waters of South Atlantic. The hopes are high especially with recent exploration success offshore Guyana and Mauritania. Delineation of the basins and mapping the extents of the pursued plays are two out of several critical components of the comprehensive geologic analysis and are fundamental to exploration success. During the last decade, deepwater drilling in South Atlantic proved multiple assumptions of the earlier geologic models of continent-ocean transition inadequate.

The purpose of this study is to provide a pore pressure prediction from seismic data targeting unconventional gas plays (i.e., the Qusaiba Member hot shale and the underlying Sarah Formation). The area of interest (AOI) located in NW Saudi Arabia, and is covered by 1,600 km2 of 3D pre-stack time migrated (PSTM) data. The resulting pore pressure maps for the Qusaiba Member hot shale and Sarah Formation highlight potential drilling hazards. Importantly, areas of higher pore pressure may ultimately represent potential areas of higher gas production (i.e., sweet spots).
