Duane Dopkin, 

The unconventional plays represent sources of huge opportunity for oil and gas companies and the global oil and gas economy. Established gas plays in fractured shale formations in North America (e.g. Bakken, Barnett, and Haynesville) have achieved high visibility as technology plays through successful application of multiple fracture stimulations, borehole micro-imaging, micro-seismic data, geosteered horizontals, 3D sonic scanning, and new completion strategies. These successes can be carried over to emerging shale plays (e.g. Eagle Ford), creating new opportunities for the oil and gas industry to improve recovery and mitigate the cost and risk associated with drilling activities. 

In this session we present a breakthrough seismic imaging technology that mimics the in-situ measurements of borehole technology to characterize stress, natural fractures, and geomechanical properties in an Eagle Ford shale dataset. This imaging procedure recovers in-situ measurements of full azimuth and angle domain reflectivity at subsurface image depth points where observation, measurement, and interpretation of fracture, stress, and elastic properties are more defensible and transparent. This is a radical departure from the current approach that attempts to recover the same information from data obtained from azimuthal “sectoring” of surface recorded seismic data.