Universal Seismic
Fracture Imaging
Fracture Imaging maps the geometry of hydraulic fractures in 3D, using microseismic events as seismic sources. It works with downhole geophone and fiber-optic DAS data from standard acquisition, including legacy datasets. It resolves individual fractures at 5–7 ft and images up to 5,000 ft from the events. It is the only commercial technology of its kind.
Imaged fracture geometry delivered as triangulated 3D surfaces.
Fracture Imaging Analytics
Relates the imaged fracture response to completion design and production performance. Outputs include well-level and cumulative fracture conductivity maps, fracture surface area by formation, fracture growth versus time and clean fluid volume, and the added fracture area per unit of extra clean volume. Operators use them to compare completion designs and evaluate inter-well communication and depletion.
Cumulative fracture conductivity map, gun barrel view.
Validation at HFTS2
Fracture Imaging applied to the Hydraulic Fracturing Test Site 2 (HFTS2) dataset and validated against cross-well strain and permanent fiber-optic flow profiling. A single well-placed microseismic event illuminated 2–6 distinct fracture surfaces.
HFTS2: number of distinct fractures illuminated by individual microseismic events.
Microseismic processing for fiber-optic DAS data
A complete microseismic workflow for distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) data, from event detection and location to fracture imaging.
Fracture Imaging from fiber-optic DAS data.
Moment tensor and stress inversion
A new approach to microseismic moment tensor inversion, together with stress inversion. They recover the source mechanisms of the events and the stress state around the fractures. Applied to completion evaluation and parent-child well studies in the Delaware Basin. The effect of rock anisotropy on source mechanisms is published in Geophysics.
Stress orientation recovered from microseismic source mechanisms.
Forward modelling
Fast 3D ray tracing in anisotropic media and finite-difference wave simulation, used to build velocity models, locate events and generate synthetic data.
Finite-difference wavefield with ray-traced P, S1 and S2 wavefronts in anisotropic rock.
Real-time cloud processing of field data
Cloud infrastructure that streams seismic data from the field and runs geophysical inversions in real time.
Research
Microseismic reflection imaging
A method that uses microearthquakes as seismic sources to image faults and fractures at high resolution. Applied to the San Andreas Fault at SAFOD (JGR 2010), the KTB deep borehole using a single geophone (SEG 2010), the Basel geothermal reservoir (Geophysics 2015) and the Central Andean crust (GJI 2016). It became the basis of Fracture Imaging.
Microseismic location in anisotropic shale
Methods to improve event locations in anisotropic shale: common-receiver gathers for checking time-pick quality, multipath shear-wave arrivals, velocity optimization from sonic logs and perforation shots, and simultaneous inversion of the anisotropic velocity model and event locations.
Fracture thickness from microseismicity
Estimating the effective thickness of hydraulic fractures from the spatial distribution of microseismic events.
VSP processing and imaging software
Methods for vertical seismic profiling (VSP), shipped in the commercial UNIVERS VSP package: dynamic decomposition of wavefields and model reconstruction, 2D velocity model inversion from travel times, and 3D modelling of direct and reflected waves.
Contact Info
- Email:[email protected]
- Location:Singapore
- Status:Open to new ventures, collaborations and advisory work