Fractured Reservoirs - Solutions
Challenge

Faults and natural fractures may play a significant role in reservoir production and reservoir performance. These features form a multi-scale heterogeneity challenge ranging from microscopic cracks to kilometer-long fracture swarms or fracture corridors. They can be open conduits for fluid flow or form a baffle or barrier, so the field development strategy might be to target them or to avoid them. It is a challenge for both conventional reservoirs (carbonates, tight sands) and unconventional reservoirs (shale oil, shale gas):

    • In conventional reservoirs, open fractures may impact flow pathways causing water or injector fluid breakthrough, thus controlling sweep efficiency and influencing productivity at producer wells and injectivity potential at injector wells.
    • In tight reservoirs, fractures have a direct impact on the recoverable reserve estimates by providing permeability pathways.
    • In unconventional reservoirs, natural fractures impact the production rate and hydro-frac efficiency and geometry.

RSI Solutions
  • Post Stack workflow including:
    • Developing rock physics models to calibrate rock properties at well control data points (iMOSS)
    • Data conditioning (AVATAR)
    • Attribute Extraction & Calibration at well control (iMOSS)
    • Seismic Facies Analysis (ATTRIB3D)
    • Kohonen self-organizing neural network facies classifications (LITHANN)
    • Automatic Fault Extraction (AFE)
  • Pre-stack workflow including in addition to the above:
    • Azimuthal AVO inversion (AVOZ)
  • Visualization and joint interpretation using several data mining techniques and latest visualization techniques (e.g. TransForm, SKUA)
  • Advanced rock Physics (isotropic and anisotropic (VTI, HTI)
  • Unique joint interpretation workflow to integrate with other fracture-related data such as micro-seismic, borehole imagery, geomechanics, production data (PLT, bubble maps, well test interpretation, interference test interpretation)