Data analysis, processing and 3D fracture network simulation at wellbore scale for fractured reservoir description

Three-dimensional fracture networks, combined from seismic scale to wellbore scale , can greatly enhance the knowledge of fracture contribution to hydrocarbon storage and flow inside the reservoir. This paper presents some techniques used at ENI-Agip for fracture network simulation at wellbore scale. First, new imaging techniques adopted for enhancing and facilitating the data acquisition from orientated cores will be shown. We will discuss how the fracture data, acquired from the combined analysis of orientated core and wellbore image logs, have to be processed in order to calculate the geometrical parameters of each feature (dip direction, dip, size, terminations) and to classify them according to their filling (oil, water, shale, calcite, etc.). Second, we will illustrate how these kind of data are processed in order to extract the fracture representative parameters needed for stochastic simulation of fracture network at the wellbore scale: spatial distribution along the cored/logged interval, number of fracture sets, representative orientation and statistical distribution of each set, distribution laws of the fracture length and relevant minimum radii and fracture aperture estimate. Fracture porosity evaluation, matrix block size, fracture network connectivity at wellbore scale constitute the outputs of such simulations: they are used to better characterize a fractured reservoir and to describe its behaviour. The synthetic results of the application of such a methodology on a real case (tight packstone/wackestone of carbonate platform from a southern Apennine italian oil reservoir) complete the paper.