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FIRST BREAK
May 2008 Volume 26
4D Seismic
and improving recovery requires an altogether more connected approach.
Now fully part of the Schlumberger family, WesternGeco people and technology are enabling
the integration of the traditionally distinct areas of survey design, seismic acquisition, Special Topic
data processing, inversion and reservoir characterization into a seamless workflow.
The result is advanced geophysics that is globally consistent, calibrated, and connected ■ Technical Articles
with other geophysical and wellbore data in the seismic to simulation process.
www.slb.com/westerngeco Building velocity models for depth imaging: a North Sea case study
Passive seismic and surface deformation monitoring of steam injection
■ Technology Features
Deep water pre-processing: East Coast India
Make reservoir decisions with a greater degree of confidence. Mapping fracture corridors in naturally fractured reservoirs of the Middle East
© 2008 Schlumberger. 08_se_070
first break volume 26, May 2008 technology feature
In many oil and gas reservoirs, natural size and extension (vertical and lateral). that the subsequent attributes input
fracture networks help drain hydro- Their dimensions can vary over a wide to the DES processing contain mean-
carbons and other fluids. The role of range. For instance, some of them have ingful information to map fracture
fractures is particularly important in been found to be 10 m wide, 100 m clusters. This may require bespoke
reservoirs having a tight matrix. In high, and 1000 m long. Such FCs can acquisition design and data process-
carbonate formations, for example, it is contain more than hundreds to ten ing workflows using single-sensor
quite common to observe a permeabil- thousand fractures and have a perme- data. Seismic attributes sensitive to
ity contrast of 1000 or more between ability well above 10 Darcy. Other fracture clusters are identified and
the rock matrix and surrounding frac- types of clusters can also be observed. input to the DES. The direction-
tures. Natural fractures are a recording Individual fractures or those that do al (azimuthal) and inclination (dip)
of the reservoir stress history. They tend not appear to be a part of FCs are filters used in the DES processing
to be organized in different families called diffuse fractures. are designed based on the analy-
oriented according to particular direc- Conductive FCs are major high- sis of cores, borehole images, sonic
tions. Fracture corridors (FCs) are an ways for fluids flow in the reservoir and logs, and VSPs (e.g., offset, walk-
extraordinary cluster of a huge number their exact positions must be known around, walkaway, and 3D VSPs).
of quasi-parallel fractures. FCs vary in and accurately mapped in the reser- Moreover, the structural and tecton-
voir model in order to obtain realis- ic history of the study area is also
tic dynamic reservoir simulations. This employed in the process of param-
information is essential in order to eter optimization and assessment of
select injector and producer well loca- the results obtained.
tions that maximize the reservoir sweep The general DES processing
efficiency. A workflow to map all major tends to overlook quite a signifi-
FCs in a reservoir is described here. cant percentage of fracture clusters
Results are presented for five Middle of various orientations and dimen-
East carbonate fields in Kuwait. sions when the directional filter is
kept open to all 360˚ of azimuth with
Fracture cluster mapping a fixed range of features’ inclination.
workflow and results In such a situation, the DES process-
The workflow is based on the assump- ing tends to follow the strongest later-
tion that, when natural fractures exist in al discontinuities in the vertical plane
the form of clusters of larger dimensions caused by larger fracture clusters, and
(i.e. 10-30 m or more in width, vertical it skips over the less strong and weak-
and horizontal lengths), they should be er discontinuities or signatures of frac-
expressed in some way in the 3D seismic ture clusters that are either of the same
data. The workflow mainly involves orientation or different orientations. To
integration of borehole data with the 3D capture such discontinuities, the direc-
seismic to optimize the extraction proc- tional filter is divided into a number of
Figure 1 Sabriyah Field in North Kuwait used as a ess achieved through the discontinuity windows/ranges and the inclination fil-
key area in the study. X-5 and X-6 are the new wells extraction software (DES) processing. ter is set at one or more than one dip
that were being drilled at the time of the study.
The 3D seismic data must exhibit inclination range. DES processing is
The fracture clusters predicted by FCM for these
wells were validated by the cores and borehole optimal spatial/temporal bandwidth run separately for each set of direction-
images obtained from them. and signal-to-noise ratio to ensure al and inclination filters. Each run of
Figure 4 As observed in the borehole images, nearly all orientations of fracture clusters were detected from the 3D seismic by running DES for two different sets
of parameters. Possibly fold related longitudinal fractures and strike-slip fault related riedel shear types of fracture clusters were detected with this technique.
shows fracture clusters along a section In addition to the factors men- workflow. This shows that the acqui-
through Wells X-2 and X-3 extract- tioned under the FCM workflow, reso- sition of a fracture corridor map can
ed by FCM technique using a 050-080 lution of the input seismic data is very be an essential element for the place-
and 230-260 azimuth filter to enhance important to highlight fracture clus- ment of injectors and producers to
fracture clusters having strike orienta- ters of larger to smaller dimensions. maximize recovery from a field.
tions within that specific range of azi- The FCM workflow was applied to
muth. It is clear from the plot that the the Q-Land seismic data from the NW- Possible origin of
Well X-3 does not intersect any fracture Raudhatain Field to determine how fracture corridors
clusters over the interval from top Naj- much improvement could be made in Whatever the real mechanism at micro-
mah to top Middle Marrat. It intersects the details of fracture clusters. Figure scopic scale, brittle failure of a rock
a major fracture cluster in the interval 7 shows a comparison of FCM results occurs with respect to two modes at
from Middle Marrat to top Minjur (Fig- from the conventional 3D surface seis- mesoscopic scale: the tensile and shear
ure 5). A similar observation was made mic data with those derived from modes (Figure 7). The tensile mode
in the wellbore using cores and borehole Q-Technology single-sensor data. A (Mode 1) is a failure that occurs per-
images as shown by the stick plot and good correlation was observed between pendicularly to the minimum principal
fracture density (number of fractures per well productivity and the proximity of stress without shear at the fracture
foot) curve for open fractures. fracture clusters predicted by the FCM plane. On the contrary, the shear failure
Conclusion
We have presented a workflow that
allows us to map in 3D all major frac-
ture corridors in a field. The workflow Figure 8 Fracture corridor development. Left: Fault (f) initiation in a shear layer (S) inducing a lateral
was successfully applied to the NW elongation (E) in this layer and extensional stress zones (ESZ) in tensile layers where fractures are initi-
ated. Right: fault propagation inducing a corridor of fractures whose aperture compensates for the fault
Raudhatain, Sabriyah, Umm Niqqa, and elongation (E) and vertical displacement on few of these fracture to compensate the vertical throw on
Bahra carbonate fields in Kuwait. Due the fault (vt).
to the limited seismic signature of some
of the fracture corridors, best results more importantly, will help significantly L., Pedersen, L.S., Bakiler, C. and God-
are obtained when using high-resolution increase hydrocarbon recovery factors in frey, R. [2008] An Innovative Approach
seismic technology. The presence of frac- carbonate reservoirs and other naturally to Characterizing Fractures for a Large
ture corridors has often been put for- fractured formations. Carbonate Field of Kuwait by Integrat-
ward as a possible explanation for water ing Borehole Data with the 3D Surface
breakthroughs that occur much earlier Acknowledgements Seismic. GEO2008, Bahrain, Abstract
than initially anticipated. With 3D maps The authors thank Kuwait Company 118994.
of fracture corridors becoming available, for permission to publish this work and Montaron, B.A.. Bradley, D., Cooke, A.,
these can now be integrated in reservoir Donatella Astratti and Robert Godfrey Prouvost, L., Raffin, A., Vidal, A. and
models to determine the optimum well for their invaluable contributions. Wilt, M. Shapes of Flood Fronts in Het-
locations using more realistic reservoir erogeneous Reservoirs and Oil Recovery
simulations. It is hoped that such a meth- References Strategies. SPE/EAGE Reservoir Char-
odology (Montaron et al., 2007) will Akbar, M., Singh, S.K., Khan, B., Abu-Habbiel, acterization & Simulation Conference,
avoid water breakthrough surprises and, H., Maizeret, P.D., Astratti, D., Sonneland, Paper 11147.
Figure 9 Fracture corridor in quartzite developed on top of a small fault in shaly layers.