Fractured reservoirs are arguably the most difficult type of hydrocarbon reservoirs to evaluate from a commercial perspective. Evaluation problems manifest themselves at all stages of a fractured reservoir development; from exploration and production drilling through s.t.o.o.i.p calculation and reservoir simulation. A significant aspect of these problems arises from the difficulty in locating producing fractures and in assigning reservoir parameters to them. Once fractures have been identified and classified, the problem then becomes how to model them away from the borehole and ultimately how to use this information in a dynamic reservoir simulation. A key data set in such an evaluation is provided by borehole image logs. This paper discusses how borehole image logs have been used to identify producing fractures, to help model the stress field and to provide input to three dimensional models of producing fracture systems.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90937©1998 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah