Continuous Fracture Modeling

Prevailing industry knowledge believes that imaging natural fracture systems is a challenging task because mainstream technology is not capable of building a predictive model of the reservoir. Since more than 70% of the world's known hydrocarbon reservoirs contain natural fracture systems, many customers tell us that continuous fracture modeling would be a valuable addition to their evaluation and development workflows that would help them control the high cost of reservoir fracturing.

Imagine the impact of reducing just one frac stage per well could have on an aggressive, but typical drilling plan in North America. Many E&P companies operating onshore in the US plan to drill at least 80 wells this year, with up to 40 frac stages per well. With an average cost per frac stage of 150K, a technology that could eliminate the need for just one stage would save 12M in one year. What if you could eliminate three? The savings scale up quickly.

SIGMA³ has a solution that creates a framework for analyzing seismic, core data, image logs and production indicators to create and maintain a predictive model showing the location of fractures.

SIGMA³ acquired Prism Seismic due, in part, to its revolutionary solution that delivers such dramatic improvement, and raising the bar for the upstream E&P industry. It might sound too good to be true, but the proof is in the production. Instead of creating a mathematical model showing where fractures might be, the SIGMA³ patented Continuous Fracture Modeling (CFM) solution creates a predictive model that accurately shows where fractures are actually located, how many there are, as well as their orientation. For the majority of the world's reservoirs where natural fractures drive production, this innovative breakthrough means higher initial production rates, increased EURs, and optimized well plans that increase production.

Continuous Fracture Modeling