Print this pageAAPG GEO 2010 Middle East
Geoscience Conference & Exhibition
Innovative Geoscience Solutions – Meeting Hydrocarbon Demand in Changing Times
March 7-10, 2010 – Manama, Bahrain
FMI Formation Microimager - High 
Resolution
Solution Tool to Reveal Structural Complexity, Western Desert, Egypt
(1) Data Consulting Services, Schlumberger Consulting Services, Cairo, Egypt.
The Formation Micro Imager tool provides high resolution electrical images, which is capable of detecting any features within the studied formation. In majority of cases, FMI can replace an expensive coring cost depending on the finer scale details identified beside image contrast and extended borehole coverage.
A very well known oil company in Egypt is drilling in Western Desert province with high profile drilling program, almost 10 wells per month, and as all the structural complexity is being solved by their high resolution seismic sections, hardly any problem or well misplacing they faced before. This is before they drill one of their development wells, in which they encountered a very unusual section; where all the supplementary data and the conventional open hole logs beside ditch cutting and microscopic examination didn’t reveal any fair solution to them.
FMI images were kept as their last chance trying to understand how this dilemma could be solved. FMI overall image quality was very good, which contributed efficiently to the structural interpretation results. The processed FMI* image showed strong and distinctive evidence for the severe cataclastic deformation, rocks breakage, fractures and brecciation owing to the crushing and pulverization processes along the sub- seismic faults planes cutting through the studied formation.
The studied well is vertical over the entire logged interval, hence penetrated the investigated zone parallel to two (sub-vertical
) main cross-cutting faults; therefore the well was penetrating through the breccia zone along the fault plane for a considerable distance. This resulted in a great thickness, about 30 m, which was imaged over that fault breccia zone.
FMI was the only tool capable of solving this structural complexity and mixed lithology that were never been solved unless cored, and hence increasing the well capital expenditures as compared to a single FMI run.