Geophysical Approach to Naturally Fractured Reservoir Characterization and Its Applications, a case from Kuwait.

Abstract

Fractures play a major role in the production from low permeability carbonate reservoirs. In this paper, an integrated approach for fracture characterization using seismic attributes is attempted. In order to get better detection and interpretation of fractured zones, multi seismic attributes including volume curvature, coherency etc. were applied to reduce the uncertainties associated with the seismic data, and some geological constraints including faults-associated fracture zones etc. were used to interpret and identify the fracture features correctly.The Makhul Formation in Kuwait is a tight and low porosity fractured reservoir and is an important target for hydrocarbon exploration. From a preliminary 3D seismic attribute analysis of the area of interest, the attributes of curvature (positive and negative), semblance and ant tracking have been the most helpful tools in predicting where a high density of fractures might exist and their general orientation.

3D seismic discontinuity attributes analyses for low – permeability reservoir sand fractures characterisation: an onshore example from Niger delta, Nigeria

“…Seismic attributes employed for fracture detection are usually the types which can delineate the vertical and lateral discontinuity of seismic traces (Pico et al 2012). Figure 7(a) shows the result of similarity attribute on time-slice 2100 ms.…”