Integrated Study Aids Characterization and Modeling of Natural-Fracture Networks
Authors: Wilson Adam 
Published: October 2018

This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains highlights of paper SPE 186043, “An Integrated Study To Characterize and Model Natural-Fracture Networks of Gas-Condensate Carbonate Reservoirs, Onshore Abu Dhabi,” by Budour Ateeq, Mohamed El Gohary, Khalid Al Ammari, and Rashad Masoud, ADCO; Abdelwahab Noufal, ADNOC; Ghislain de Joussineau and Martin Weber, Beicip Franlab; and Dinesh Agrawal, IFP Middle East Consulting, prepared for the 2017 SPE Reservoir Characterization and Simulation Conference and Exhibition, Abu Dhabi, 8–10 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
Natural fractures can have a significant effect on fluid flow by creating permeability anisotropy in hydrocarbon reservoirs. They can also play an undesirable role in reservoir subsidence and compaction during depletion, with important consequences for production strategy. The investigation of these effects motivated a comprehensive integrated fracture study of three reservoirs from a giant gas-condensate field in Abu Dhabi. The main objective was to build 3D fracture models and compute fracture properties of each reservoir, to be used in dynamic simulations.
Introduction
The studied reservoirs are gas-condensate-bearing in a carbonate field onshore Abu Dhabi. The field has an anticlinal structure and consists of a series of stacked reservoirs, among which three (Reservoirs A, B, and C) were part of this study. For each reservoir, the production comes mainly from the large gas-bearing area above the gas/oil contact, which is surrounded by a thin peripheric oil rim.
The studied field has a long production history; Reservoir A has produced oil and gas for 30 years. Minor fracturing was observed during routine core analyses in the past, but a comprehensive fracture characterization at field scale was never conducted. Because fractures may have a major bearing on production and could play a significant role in rock compaction and collapse during reservoir depletion, an important objective was to ascertain the risk related to the geomechanical stability of these reservoirs because of the presence of natural-fracture networks.
Work Flow
An integrated work flow was applied in order to characterize fracture distribution and flow effect in the reservoirs properly. The work flow consisted of the following key steps:
Fracture characterization from 3D seismic data and subsequent detection of fracture corridors
Fracture characterization from core data
Fracture characterization from borehole image data
Fracture characterization from well dynamic data
Conceptual fracture model
Building of a 3D fracture model
Dynamic calibration of the 3D model using flowmeter and well-test data
Upscaling and computation of equivalent fracture properties for the simulation grid using the calibrated model
Static Fracture Characterization
Fracture characterization using the seismic data initiated the work flow and was followed by the interpretation of fractures from borehole images and core data.
Fracture Characterization From 3D Seismic Data. This task was performed to detect the seismic and the subseismic faults and fracture corridors within the three reservoirs. Seismic fracture-facies maps and fracture-index maps were created on the basis of post-stack discontinuity attributes (e.g., curvature, polar dip, and similarity) computed from the inverted seismic cube.