Alexei Bolshakov

Unconventional Reservoir Fracture Evaluation Utilizing Deep Shear-Wave Imaging

Unconventional shale reservoir evaluation and development are extremely challenging. One of the most dominating aspects is permeability, which is measured in the nano-darcy range. Although these wells are stimulated to enhance production, the presence or absence of natural fractures can have a large impact on the production results. In addition, the fracture variation across a reservoir can be substantial, leading to large production variations, even in adjacent wells. Gaining insight about the natural fracture system, both intersecting and around the borehole, is crucial and can often help determine the economic success of a well and/or reservoir. The standard means of fracture evaluation, such as borehole imaging, Stoneley permeability analysis, and azimuthal shearwave anisotropy evaluation from cross-dipole, provide valuable information when evaluating fractures. These standard methods, however, can only investigate a limited area around the borehole—imaging looks at the borehole wall and the other borehole acoustic methods rely on refracted and guided modes that respond to an area as large as 2 to 4 ft out into the formation. The flexural wave from the dipole is one of the guided modes that generally reads the deepest and is used in the standard cross-dipole analysis. In addition to flexural mode, the dipole source creates shear body waves that radiate away from the borehole and into the formation. When these shear waves impinge on a fracture their energy reflects back to the borehole, enabling the facture to be imaged. The reflection strength is a function of the shear-wave polarization and the nature of the fracture, with the strongest response occurring from the shear waves intersecting a fluid/gas-filled fracture and polarizing in the fracture’s strike direction. Another important aspect is that these shear waves have azimuthal sensitivity, providing a means to determine the fracture direction. These features enable the evaluation of fractures over a much larger area around the well, often in excess of 60 ft from the borehole, and even detecting major fractures that do not intersect the well. We will look at the application of this deep shear-wave imaging technology in several unconventional reservoirs across North America. Our review includes conventional methods and the deep shear-wave imaging analysis, showing its value in gaining important insight about the natural fracture system around the borehole, especially non-intersecting fractures. In addition, we will look at its application in mapping geologic structures in horizontal wells, demonstrating the ability to detect sub-seismic faults.

APPLICATION OF SPECIAL FILTERING TECHNIQUES IN THE ANALYSIS OF EMAT DATA

The applicability of Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMAT) for downhole applications in the oil and gas industry is being currently investigated. This application, when compared to conventional usage of EMAT for pipeline inspection, imposes significant engineering and data processing challenges due to difficult downhole conditions, wide variability of casing sizes (both in diameter and thickness) and signal to noise ratio (SNR) limitations. In this paper the investigation of different filtering techniques and methods aimed at analyzing EMAT data for various downhole scenarios, separation and detection of different modes and improvement of SNR is detailed. The techniques being investigated are frequency (FIR) filtering, Gaussian wavelet decomposition, synchronous detection and their combination. The methods and techniques proposed are confirmed and validated based on the results obtained from the numerical simulations and experiments with physical models.

USE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC ACOUSTIC TRANSDUCERS (EMATS) FOR CEMENT BOND LOGGING OF GAS STORAGE WELLS

According to the Department of Energy (DOE), there are approximately 110 operators maintaining more than 17,000 gas storage wells in over 415 underground storage facilities across the USA. In virtually every application, steel casing, cemented into place, serves to isolate the well from the underground formations. The process of cementing wellbore casing provides two major benefits: 1) cement prevents gas migration between the casing and formation; 2) cement transfers stress from the casing to the formation, increasing the effective strength and working pressure of the casing. Current cement evaluation techniques use an acoustic wave generated and received by a logging tool within the wellbore to detect cement placed outside the casing. These techniques rely on fluid in the casing to provide acoustic coupling between the logging tool and the casing and therefore are unable to operate in gas‐filled boreholes. This paper details efforts to confirm the validity and applicability of the use of EMATs for evaluating cement in gas‐filled boreholes. The methods and techniques proposed for the cement bond logging using EMATs are confirmed and validated based on the results obtained from the numerical modeling and experiments with physical cement models. Partial funding for this investigation was provided by the DOE and Gas Storage Technology Consortium.