The characterization of natural and induced fractures, in terms of fracture orientation, fracture spacing (or density), and fracture compliance, is critical in reservoir development. Given the multi-scale nature of fracture distribution, the commonly used effective anisotropy assumption may not be valid everywhere. The recently proposed double-beam method has been promising in inverting for spatially dependent fracture network information for a horizontal reservoir layer. However, the inverted results can be biased if the fractured layer is dipping. As a result, it is essential to estimate and include the dipping angle of the fractured reservoir layer in the inversion. We used synthetic dataset to show this effect and we proposed a method to correct for the error caused by the dipping. Our new method can correctly invert for the fracture parameters including the fracture orientation and fracture spacing in a dipping reservoir layer.
Presentation Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Start Time: 9:45 AM
Location: 330A
Presentation Type: ORAL
