Fractured Basement Reservoir

The demands that remain high with the reserves that declining time by time makes oil
and gas becoming more and more difficult to be found. The declining of the production rates
insist to drill deeper in the previous well to gain new reservoirs that have bigger hydrocarbon
reserves. The ideal reservoir who has been produced more than 30 years getting declined
dramatically on pressure and production rates. When the reserves of hydrocarbon are
becoming harder to find, a geologist induced to keep looking, and sometimes things that are
impossible become possible. Usually, oil and gas companies will stop the drilling when they
already found granite or any other crystalline rocks as the basement. Altough they found
naturally fractures that contain hydrocarbon, those things are assumed as non-economic
reservoir to produce hydrocarbon. But, now, the potential of Fracture Basement Reservoir is
looked as a new prospective thing to be more explored, and it is also supported by some cases
on the basement field that found actively produce hydrocarbon in recent decades.

In Indonesia, hydrocarbon reservoir discovery coming from basement rocks have

occurred since 1970’s (Yuwono, 2012). The concept of basement rock in oil and gas basin
(Koesomadinata, 2008) is usually as igneous (plutonic) and metamorphic rocks. Naturally
fractured reservoirs have been classified according to the relative contribution of the matrix
and fractures to the total fluid production (Nelson, 2001), but Fractured Basement Reservoirs
differ from other types of naturally fractured reservoirs in that they are generally considered to
have no primary porosity (Le Van Hung et al., 2009) and are considered to be type fractures
that provide essential porosity and permeability reservoirs. Cracks or foliations usually exist in
all rocks as planes formed due to stress or overload upon rocks like repetition of thin layers on
sedimentary rocks, layers due to mineral composition or cleavage on igneous rocks, and the
occurrence of thinness or other structural planes in metamorphic rocks (Passhier and Trouw,
1996). Crack analysis was carried out as an important way in searching basement rocks.

Five Indonesian oil and gas field known having produced hydrocarbon from basement
reservoirs (both igneous rock and limestone) are Beruk, Suban, Sei Teras, Tanjung, and Oseil
Seram Fields. But for example, Tanjung Field in Barito Basin, South Kalimantan at the northern
side of Meratus Mountain occurs a basement rock named Ayuh Massive that consists of
granodiorite, diorite, gabbro, dolerite, schist, gneiss, and volcanoclastic sediments. Cracks or
joints are in tercrossed forming a regular distribution pattern, the sediment settlement above
and the tectonic process as well as stress release played a positive role in increasing the quality
of Tanjung field reservoir. Densely paired of folds and faults proved the strong tectonics in this
area. This field has been produced over 20 million barrels oil from pre-Tertiary basement rocks.