Brittleness evaluation of resource plays by integrating petrophysics and seismic analysis

Summary The main considerations for well plan and hydraulic fracturing in the conventional plays include 1) the amount of total organic carbon (TOC) and 2) how much hydrocarbon can be extracted. Brittleness is the direct measurement of a formation about the ability to create avenues for hydrocarbons when suffering to hydraulic fracturing. Usually Brittleness is estimated from 1) laboratory stress-strain measurements 2) rock properties and 3) mineral contents analysis using well logs. However well log based brittleness only shows the properties near the borehole when the amount of wells or log type is limited, resulting a two dimensional result. In this paper, we proposed a workflow to estimate brittleness of shale plays in three dimension at seismic scale by integrating the rock properties from petrophysics and seismic analysis. The workflow begins by brittleness evaluation using well logs at the borehole location. Then we prestack invert the fidelity preserved seismic gather to generate rock property volumes. At last we integrate brittleness estimation from seismic and petrophysics analysis where the petrophysics result serves as the bench mark. We apply our workflow to a survey acquired over Fort Worth Basin, TX, USA where eight wells locate in this survey. The brittleness estimation from seismic analysis shows high correlation to that from petrophysics analysis at the seismic scale.