Reservoir Characterization for Fracture Distribution Prediction and New Well Target Identification

Abstract

One of the main challenges in the fractured basement exploration and development is the identification of proper well targets with minimized drilling risk. The estimation of fracture porosity and permeability distribution in reservoirs with low matrix porosity is also very challenging as the production relies mostly on the complex fracture network. The proposed method aims at identifying the potential flow-contributing fractures, modeling accurately the fracture density in the interwell space, and finally, building a robust and well-calibrated discrete fracture network (DFN) that is used to compute porosity and permeability properties. This holistic approach integrates the latest technologies for interpreting borehole images, identifying open fractures, computing fracture aperture, and generating a DFN. It also includes at each step qualitative and quantitative analyses to optimize the choice of 3D parameters: seismic attributes and estimations of fracture length, orientation and aperture distribution.