Multi-scale Fracture Prediction Using P-wave Data - A Case Study

Fracture prediction is very difficult when characterizing unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs, especially for reservoirs with different fracture scale sizes. Here, we present an integrated workflow combined with poststack and prestack seismic attributes to distinguish between fractures of different scale, which is used in a case study from a basin in China. We classify fracture scales into three categories: macro-scale, meso-scale and micro-scale. In this case study, we used poststack seismic attributes to predict the macro-scale fractures, and utilized prestack seismic inversion to determine the meso-scale fractures. Micro-scale fracture prediction is out of the range of this study. We combined the prediction results with the superimposed images of faults, verified the corresponding relation between meso-scale fractures and faults, and finally comprehensively analyzed the fracture development of the target horizon. The integrated prediction result indicates that the structure of the target horizon is mainly controlled by several major faults and meso-scale fractures are distributed along the fault zones.