Seismic Attribute Analysis of Fractures within Saturated Media

Principal Investigator
Fateh Bouchaala
Department
Earth Sciences
Focus Area
Hydrocarbon Exploration & Production
Seismic Attribute Analysis of Fractures within Saturated Media

Natural fractures formed as a result of geological deformation as part of reservoir history create complex paths for fluid movement that impact reservoir permeability, ultimately affecting production performance and increasing the recovery factor. Therefore, obtaining information about fractures, such as their orientation and spatial distribution, is critical in well placement and field development. Information about natural fractures is usually obtained from the analysis of cores, full-bore formation microimagers (FMIs), borehole images (BHIs), mud losses, and production logs obtained at the well location. However, interpretation of such data remains subjective because it depends on human evaluation, and it is only valid at the well location.

The initial part of the project will focus on the analysis and assessment of several seismic attributes such amplitude variation with offset (AVO), velocity anisotropy and seismic wave attenuation for obtaining fractures properties such as their fluid content and orientation. This will be through a good literature study and synthetic tests to be performed using an in-house and open source codes. Seismic attenuation is a new attribute and is not commonly used because of the difficulty of getting an accurate estimate of this parameter especially from 3D seismic data.

Seismic Attribute Analysis of Fractures within Saturated Media