Volume curvature attribute – an additional control for fracture swarm identification: Sabriyah case study

In the recent years North Kuwait area has gained further importance with the establishment of commercial quantities of oil and gas in the Jurassic Reservoirs. These Jurassic Carbonate reservoirs present many challenges for field development due to the inherent heterogeneity coupled with a dual porosity system viz.., porosity development due to primary porosity / dolomitisation and natural fractures. Till date 29 wells have been drilled in the six fields of North Kuwait, for Jurassic reservoirs. In particular, in the structurally more complex Sabriyah area the oil & gas production is mostly from the naturally fractured tight carbonate reservoirs in the depth range of 13500’ to 16000’. Seismic attributes play a key role in identifying fracture corridors and help in locating ‘sweet spots’ for placing appraisal / development wells. In this study a suite of seismic attributes were used in the identification of such ‘sweet spots’ in the Middle Marrat and Najmah-Sargelu fracture play of North Kuwait. The surface derived attributes like Dip, Azimuth, DipAzimuth and Edge; the surface associated attribute Coherency augmented with the 3D Volume Curvature attribute were utilized in high grading areas of potential fracture corridors and contributed to the selection process of development locations for this play.