Publications

Identification of a dual porosity-permeability (poroperm) system in a reservoir due to presence of fractured reservoir early in a field life cycle helps in properly planning for field development thereby potentially avoiding costly development surprises and making use of the fractures for production optimization. 3D modeling and characterization of fractured reservoir involves understanding of likely paleo stress-strain regime in a field related to the tectonic history of the basin which is the main driver for fracture development and orientation. Careful study of static data like interpreted image logs, cores, 3D seismic data helps in identification of the sets of fractures present in different stratigraphic units, their orientation, and other geometric parameters. Latest fracture modeling softwares allow generation of possible 3D Discrete Fracture Network for each identified fracture sets using various techniques like simple deterministic methods or stochastic methods using seismic attributes or other data as soft data and well based fracture intensity data as hard data. Fracture attributes like aperture and transmissivity can be calculated by simple empirical relations or from actual data if available. The 3D discrete fracture network is upscaled into the 3D geological model having primary matrix poro-perm model by generating 3D grids of fracture porosity and permeability tensors using a flow based or statistical upscaling method. A study of present day stressstrain regime helps in understanding the likely relatively open set of fractures. Thus the developed fracture porosity permeability model requires validation mainly from dynamic data will be the basis for a dual poro-perm based static model for taking up reservoir simulation studies of naturally fractured reservoirs. A nested iterative workflow with generic examples has been used to describe the above discussed method of characterization and modeling of naturally fractured reservoirs.