Characterization of In-Situ Stress and Permeability in Fractured Reservoirs

Fracture orientation and spacing are important parameters in reservoir development. This project resulted in the development and testing of a new method for estimating fracture orientation and two new methods for estimating fracture spacing from seismic data. The methods developed were successfully applied to field data from fractured carbonate reservoirs. Specific results include: the development a new method for estimating fracture orientation from scattered energy in seismic data; the development of two new methods for estimating fracture spacing from scattered energy in seismic data; the successful testing of these methods on numerical model data and field data from two fractured carbonate reservoirs; and the validation of fracture orientation results with borehole data from the two fields. Researchers developed a new method for determining the reflection and scattering characteristics of seismic energy from subsurface fractured formations. The method is based upon observations made from 3D finite difference modeling of the reflected and scattered seismic energy over discrete systems of vertical fractures. Regularly spaced, discrete vertical fractures impart a ringing coda type signature to seismic energy that is transmitted through or reflected off of them. This signature varies in amplitude and coherence as a function of several parameters including: (1) the difference in angle between the orientation of the fractures and the acquisition direction, (2) the fracture spacing, (3) the wavelength of the illuminating seismic energy, and (4) the compliance, or stiffness, of the fractures. This coda energy is the most coherent when the acquisition direction is parallel to the strike of the fractures. It has the largest amplitude when the seismic wavelengths are tuned to the fracture spacing, and when the fractures have low stiffness. The method uses surface seismic reflection traces to derive a transfer function that quantifies the change in the apparent source wavelet before and after propagating through a fractured interval. When a 3D seismic survey is acquired with a full range of azimuths, the variation in the derived transfer functions allows identification of subsurface areas with high fracturing and determines the strike of those fractures. The method was calibrated with model data and then applied it to data from two fractured carbonate reservoirs giving results that agree with well data and fracture orientations derived from other measurements. In addition, two approaches for estimating fracture spacing from scattered seismic energy were developed. The first method relates notches in the amplitude spectra of the scattered wavefield to the dominant fracture spacing that caused the scattering. The second uses conventional frequency-wavenumber (FK) filtering to isolate the backscattered signals and then recovers an estimate of the fracture spacing from the dominant wavelength of those signals. The methods were applied to Emilio Field data, resulting in the fracture spacing estimates of about 30-40 meters in both cases