Discrimination of Natural Fractures From Drilling-Induced Wellbore Failures in Wellbore Image Data—Implications for Reservoir Permeability

Abstract

Summary Natural fractures and drilling-induced wellbore failures provide critical constraints on the state of in-situ stress and the direct applicability to problems of reservoir production, hydrocarbon migration, and wellbore stability. Acoustic, electrical, and optical wellbore images provide the means to detect and characterize natural fracture systems and to distinguish them from induced wellbore failures. We present new techniques and criteria to measure and characterize attributes of natural and induced fractures in borehole image data. These techniques are applied to the characterization of fracture permeability in two case studies.