Interpretation of hydraulic rock types with resistivity logs in Tertiary deepwater turbidite reservoirs: Pore-scale modeling verified with field observations in the Gulf of Mexico, USA
Well-log-based hydraulic rock typing is critical in deepwater reservoir description and modeling. Resistivity logs are often used for hydraulic rock typing due to their high sensitivity to rock textural attributes such as porosity and tortuosity. However, resistivity logs measured at different water saturation conditions need to be cautiously used for hydraulic rock typing because, by definition, the properties of hydraulic rock types (HRT) are independent of fluid saturation. We compare theoretical models of electrical and hydraulic conductivity of clastic rocks exhibiting different pore-size distributions and originating from different sedimentary grain sizes. When rocks exhibiting similar porosity ranges are fully saturated with high-salinity water, hydraulic conductivity is dominantly controlled by characteristic pore size while electrical conductivity is only marginally affected by the characteristic pore size. As a result, rock types with similar porosity but different characteristic pore sizes cannot be effectively differentiated with resistivity logs in a water-bearing zone. In a hydrocarbon-bearing zone at irreducible water saturation, capillary pressure gives rise to specific desaturation behaviors in different rock types during hydrocarbon migration, thereby causing differentiable resistivity log attributes that are suitable for classifying HRT. Core data and well logs acquired from a deep-drilling exploration well penetrating Tertiary turbidite oil reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico, verify that inclusion of resistivity logs in the rock classification workflow can significantly improve the accuracy of hydraulic rock typing in zones at irreducible water saturation. Classification results exhibit a good agreement with those obtained from nuclear magnetic resonance logs, but have relatively lower vertical resolution. The detected and ranked HRT exhibit different grain-size distributions, which provide useful information for sedimentary facies analysis.