CASE STUDY

ONGC Focuses on Basement Exploration Through

Petrel Fracture Modeling
Discrete fracture network helps target fractured hydrocarbon zones in basement
CHALLENGE

Understanding basement with only limited data

Formulate development plan for a large

basement field with limited well data
and low-resolution vintage seismic data.

Indias Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) initiated a pioneer exploration project in the fractured
basement reservoir of a large field in the Indian western offshore basin. Although many wells had
been drilled in the area, the targets were sections overlying the basement, and few wells had been
extended into this area to gain information on basement depth and lithology.

SOLUTION

Develop a discrete fracture network (DFN)

model to identify areas of high potential
by conducting fracture modeling within
the Petrel* E&P software platform.
RESULTS

Identified links between fractures and

hydrocarbon in basement rock and
proposed new well locations based
on the fracture distribution.

A small amount of fracture data was available from three wells. The vintage seismic data, shot
in 1997 using a narrow aperture, did not take basement imaging into consideration, and seismic
resolution below the top of the basement was poor.
ONGC sought a way to extract enough information from these limited data to formulate a development
plan with the maximum chance of success. Specifically, the goal was to model a DFN that could be
used to plan wells more effectively. Determining the fractured areas would reduce the chances of
drilling a dry well.

Understanding the fractures is a must

for exploration in basement rock.
The Petrel module, with its fracture
model capabilities to incorporate
point information from wells, has
been an effective tool for basement
modeling, even with legacy data.
S.N. Chitnis
DGM (Geology)
ONGC, Mumbai

The workflow followed by Petrel Fracture Modeling is conducted in a fully integrated environment.

Deriving the DFN model

A DFN model was created using the fracture-network capabilities in Petrel Fracture Modeling. The
modeling workflow combined the sparse well and vintage seismic data with informed fault tracking
in 3D seismic cubes to determine fracture intensity and build the DFN model.
As a first step, image logs from the three wells were analyzed to determine fracture orientation. The
fault orientations were entered into the Petrel platform as point data. The points were plotted on a
stereonet to distinguish clusters of data that could indicate fracture families (sets). This led to the
identification of four fracture sets exhibiting two trends: northeastsouthwest and northwest
southeast. These trends agreed with the borehole stress studies done in the area.

Reservoir Modeling

CASE STUDY: Discrete fracture network helps target fractured productive zones in basement, India
In the next step, automated fault tracking (ant tracking) on the seismic data
provided the means to propagate the fracture intensity of each fracture set
from the wells to the 3D structural model. To avoid overestimating the fault
intensity, ant tracking was run for each fracture set with a stereonet filter
applied to reflect set orientation. The resulting output of four ant-tracked
cubes enabled the identification of discrete fracture planes and a determination of fracture intensity for each of the four fracture sets. The DFN,
containing all of the fracture planes identified by set, was then compared
with the previously drilled wells.

Correlating fracturing and production

The DFN model correlated with the wells, showing that producing
wells were cutting through fractured zones and dry wells were not
intersecting fractures. The network model formed the basis for four
new wells in the fractured zones. Whereas the sparse and incomplete
well and seismic data alone yielded little information for future exploration,
the DFN model constructed with Petrel Fracture Modeling from these data
proved to be a valuable prediction tool.

Intensity properties were generated for the four fracture sets to correlate with the
existing wells.

The complete DFN model (left) and detail (right) show the producing well (green)
intersecting numerous fractures and the dry well (blue) that did not encounter fractures.

The stereonet plot of the fracture data distinguished four fracture sets following two trends.

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