A Comprehensive Review of Fracture Characterization and Its Impact on Oil Production in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs

Abstract

Naturally fractured reservoirs are indescribable systems to characterize and difficult to produce and forecast. For the development of such reservoirs, the role of naturally forming fractures in the different development stages needs to be recognized, especially for the pressure maintenance and enhanced oil recovery stages. Recent development in the field of naturally carbonate fractured aimed at fracture characterization, fracture modeling, and fracture network impact of fracture networks on oil recovery were reviewed. Consequently, fracture identification and characterization played pivotal roles in understanding production mechanisms by integrating multiple geosciences sources and reservoir engineering data. In addition, a realistic fracture modeling approach, such as a hybrid, can provide a more accurate representation of the behavior of the fracture and, hence, a more realistic reservoir model for reservoir production and management. In this respect, the influence of different fracture types present in the reservoir, such as major, medium, minor, and hairline fractures networks, and their orientations were found to have different rules and impacts on oil production in the primary, secondary, and EOR stages. In addition, any simplification or homogenization of the fracture types might end in over or underestimating the oil recovery. Improved fracture network modeling requires numerous considerations, such as data collection, facture characterization, reservoir simulation, model calibration, and model updating based on newly acquired field data are essential for improved fracture network description. Hence, integrating multiple techniques and data sources is recommended for obtaining a reliable reservoir model for optimizing the primary and enhanced oil recovery methods.