FRACTURED RESERVOIR

Lecture 1
By: Zuhoor Jawad Younis
Fracture: definition, types and causes
of occurrence
• A fracture is a surface along which a loss of
cohesion in the rock texture has taken place.
• A fracture is sometimes called a joint and, at the
surface, are expressed as cracks or fissures in the
rocks.
• The orientation of the fracture can be anywhere
from horizontal to vertical.
• Minerals may fill the entire fracture, converting
an open fracture to a healed or sealed fracture.
• Fractures are caused by stress in the formation,
which in turn usually derives from tectonic
forces such as folds and faults. These are
termed natural fractures, as opposed to induced
fractures. Induced fractures are created by
drilling stress or by purposely fracturing a
reservoir by hydraulic pressure from surface
equipment. Both kinds of fractures are
economically important
• Fracture porosity is usually very small. Values
between 0.0001 and 0.001 of rock volume are
typical (0.01% to 0.1%) Fracture-related
porosity, such as solution porosity in granite or
carbonate reservoirs, may attain much larger
values, but the porosity in the actual fracture is
still very small.
• Fracture system: a set of parallel fractures

• Fracture network: two or several associated fracture systems

 Secondary porosity & Fracture porosity
• The term “secondary porosity” also includes rock-
volume shrinkage due to dolomitization, porosity
increase due to solution or recrystalization, and
other geological processes.
• “Secondary porosity” should not be confused with
“fracture porosity”. Porosity formed in this way can
be determined from modern log suites without
difficulty, except for porosity formed by fractures,
which is too small to detect with conventional logs.
 Permeability&Fracture
• A fracture is often a high permeability path in a
low permeability rock, or it may be filled with a
cementing material, such as calcite, leaving the
fracture with no permeability. Thus it is important
to distinguish between open and healed fractures.
• The total volume of fractures is often small
compared to the total pore volume of the
reservoir.
• To aid in production, fractures must be connected
to a reasonable hydrocarbon-bearing reservoir
with sufficient volume to warrant exploitation.
To be an aid in production, fractures must be
connected to a reasonable hydrocarbon bearing
reservoir with sufficient volume to warrant
exploitation. If there is no reservoir volume, a lot
of fractures won’t help much unless there is
sufficient fracture related solution porosity to
hold an economic reserve
 Sources of Data for Analyses of
Fractures
1- Outcrop measurements
2-Oriented cores
3-Borehole imaging logs
4-Seismic data
Outcrop measurements
Oriented cores
Borehole imaging logs
Seismic data