Delineating Fracture Connectivity Using Network Tortuosity Decomposition

The emerging play potential of naturally fractured basement reservoir has drawn the attention of exploration in many basins. However, the complexity of imaging fractured basement makes it a difficult environment to explore and characterize. Identifying a “sweet spot”, or an area with high fracture intensity or density in the fractured basement that is filled with hydrocarbon, is extremely challenging because the fracture connectivity is not known. The regional stresses that relate to the opening and closing of the fracture are also difficult to determine. To address these issues, we develop a fracture network tortuosity decomposition tool that is able to map the connectivity of fractures, decompose the fracture network into an azimuthal distribution, determine the orientation of major and minor axis, as well as compute the fracture density/intensity in each orientation. The tool is applied on post-stack seismic data, and validated with well data for result verification.