The Relative Importance of Fracture Parameters During Fractured Reservoir Development

When developing a fractured reservoir, it is beneficial to learn from analogue fields about the fracture parameters which significantly impact fluid flow and hydrocarbon recovery under various recovery schemes. The lack of an industry standard workflow for the modelling of naturally fractured hydrocarbon reservoirs and the numerous ways in which naturally fractured rock volumes can be parameterized for input to modelling precludes a robust comparison of results from published studies. This paper presents a retrospective analysis of the results of a number of fracture modelling studies sharing a common workflow for parameterization, modelling and uncertainty handling. The objective is simple: to better understand which parameters of a natural fracture system are of key importance in estimating recovery for different development options and how parameter sensitivity varies over asset lifecycle.