--> Abstract: Outcrops Hold a Key to Improve Your Fractured Reservoirs Understanding and Profittability: From Example from Cretaceous Platform and Basin Limestones of the Maiella Mountain (Italy), by Raffaele Di Cuia, Davide Casabianca, Alaister Sharkeley, and Massimiliano Masini; #90078 (2008)

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Outcrops Hold a Key to Improve Your Fractured Reservoirs Understanding and Profittability: From Example from Cretaceous Platform and Basin Limestones of the Maiella Mountain (Italy)

Raffaele Di Cuia1, Davide Casabianca2, Alaister Sharkeley3, and Massimiliano Masini4
1Petroleum Geology Division, G.E.Plan Consulting, Ferrara, Italy
2BP, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
3Imperial College University of London, San Donato Milenese, Italy
4Departamento de Geologia, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain

Fracture reservoirs are complex to understand and challenging to exploit economically because of the great difficulty of producing three-dimensional descriptions of fracture systems from subsurface datasets alone. The study of outcrop analogues can significantly improve the understanding of the distribution of fractures and their impact to the storage and flow of hydrocarbons in the subsurface.

The Maiella mountain represents one of the most extensive and better exposed fractured reservoirs analogue outcrops in the world. It consists of Cretaceous to Late Tertiary carbonate platform and slope sediments exposed in the most external anticline of the Apennines fold and thrust belt. These rocks have been subjected to a series of tectonic events from extension to thrusting to strike-slip which have shaped the present day structure leaving related faults and fractures systems that can be studied in outcrop.

The detailed field data presented in this paper highlights how fracture density and orientation are controlled by responsible tectonic processes, bed thickness, lithology, proximity to faults and location on the fold. The outcrop data conclusions are furthermore compared with fracture systems predicted by a forward modeling technique applied by restoring seismic-scale cross sections. Finally the comparison between detailed field mapping and forward modeling predictions allows understanding where and how seismic-based predictions must be corrected with ground-truth data from outcrops in order to achieve fracture distribution at the appropriate scales and in different structural settings within the same area.

This study clearly demonstrates that it is essential to relate fracture networks to their tectonic context in order to reduce uncertainty and improve profitability of fractured reservoirs.

 

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90078©2008 AAPG Annual Convention, San Antonio, Texas