Abstract Reservoir Characterization of a Duvernay-Fox Creek Shale Reservoir using Seismic, Microseis

The Duvernay Formation, located in central Alberta, Canada, is mainly an organic-rich shale that is a source rock for conventional oil and gas reservoirs, and more recently also very attractive for exploitation as unconventional shale plays. The development of these types of plays requires the implementation of unconventional techniques, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, to increase the permeability of the reservoir. To assess the performance of a hydraulic fracturing stimulation, microseismic monitoring can be implemented to track fracture propagation and estimate the effective stimulated reservoir volume. The results of near-surface microseismic mapping, in a case study of a shale reservoir in the Kaybob-Duvernay formation, together with the available 3D seismic and well log data, are assessed to extract key characteristics of the reservoir and to forecast the hydrocarbon productivity after the hydraulic fracturing stimulation.

fig. 01 — Figure 1. a) Map view of the study area with the structure of the top of the Duvernay Formation obtained from the 3D seismic, and the four stimulated horizontal wells. This stimulation was monitored using 69 shallow boreholes with 3C stations, six surface broadband seismometers, one surface 3C geophone, and one strong-motion accelerometer. The dipole sonic logs from the vertical well were used to build a velocity model for the reservoir. b) Location of the study area near Fox Creek, Alberta, Canada, with the earthquakes (in orange) reported by a regional seismological network (stations in purple), and the reported orientation of the maximum horizontal stress (Heidbach et al., 2016). c) and d) Cross sections from the map view of the study area shown in a), with the top of the Duvernay Formation, the stimulated horizontal wells, and the vertical well with the recorded gamma ray (for reference).

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Germán R. Rodríguez-Pradilla is a Research Assistant at the Microseismic Industry Consortium and a Ph.D. candidate in Geophysics at the University of Calgary. He holds a B.Eng. in Civil Engineering and a M.Sc. in Geophysics from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and his current research focuses on developing robust methods for microseismic data processing and modeling, applied to unconventional reservoir characterization and hazard analysis of induced seismicity sequences.

Abstract: Reservoir Characterization of a Duvernay-Fox Creek Shale Reservoir using Seismic, Microseismic, and Well Log Data

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