An Improved Empirical Approach for Prediction of Formation Water Saturation and Free Water Level for Uni-modal Pore Systems

Author(s):  
Shanin Negahban ◽  
G.W. Gunter ◽  
C.R. Smart
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bashar Alramahi ◽  
Qaed Jaafar ◽  
Hisham Al-Qassab

Abstract Classifying rock facies and estimating permeability is particularly challenging in Microporous dominated carbonate rocks. Reservoir rock types with a very small porosity range could have up to two orders of magnitude permeability difference resulting in high uncertainty in facies and permeability assignment in static and dynamic models. While seismic and conventional porosity logs can guide the mapping of large scale features to define resource density, estimating permeability requires the integration of advanced logs, core measurements, production data and a general understanding of the geologic depositional setting. Core based primary drainage capillary pressure measurements, including porous plate and mercury injection, offer a valuable insight into the relation between rock quality (i.e., permeability, pore throat size) and water saturation at various capillary pressure levels. Capillary pressure data was incorporated into a petrophysical workflow that compares current (Archie) water saturation at a particular height above free water level (i.e., capillary pressure) to the expected water saturation from core based capillary pressure measurements of various rock facies. This was then used to assign rock facies, and ultimately, estimate permeability along the entire wellbore, differentiating low quality microporous rocks from high quality grainstones with similar porosity values. The workflow first requires normalizing log based water saturations relative to structural position and proximity to the free water level to ensure that the only variable impacting current day water saturation is reservoir quality. This paper presents a case study where this workflow was used to detect the presence of grainstone facies in a giant Middle Eastern Carbonate Field. Log based algorithms were used to compare Archie water saturation with primary drainage core based saturation height functions of different rock facies to detect the presence of grainstones and estimate their permeability. Grainstones were then mapped spatially over the field and overlaid with field wide oil production and water injection data to confirm a positive correlation between predicted reservoir quality and productivity/injectivity of the reservoir facies. Core based permeability measurements were also used to confirm predicted permeability trends along wellbores where core was acquired. This workflow presents a novel approach in integrating core, log and dynamic production data to map high quality reservoir facies guiding future field development strategy, workover decisions, and selection of future well locations.


1984 ◽  
Vol 24 (02) ◽  
pp. 153-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Clavier ◽  
G. Coates ◽  
J. Dumanoir

Abstract A simple petrophysical model proposed by Waxman and Smits (WS)1 in 1968 and Waxman and Thomas (WT)2 in 1972 accounts for the results of an extensive experimental study on the effects of clays on the resistivity of shaly sands. This model has been well accepted by the industry despite a few inconsistencies with experimental results. It is proposed that these inconsistencies resulted from the unaccounted presence of salt-free water at the clay/water interface. Electrochemistry indicates that this water should exist, but is there enough to influence the results? Both a theoretical study and reinterpretation of Waxman-Smits-Thomas data show that there is. The corresponding new model starts from the Waxman and Smits concept of supplementing the water conductivity with a conductivity from the clay counterions. The crucial step, however, is equating each of these conductivity terms to a particular type of water, each occupying a representative volume of the total porosity. This approach has been named the "dual-water" (DW) model because of these two water types - the conductivity and volume fraction of each being predicted by the model. The DW model has been tested on most of the core data reported in Refs. 1 and 2. The DW concept is also supported by log data3 and has been successfully applied to the interpretation of thousands of wells. However, the scope of this paper remains limited to the theoretical and experimental bases of the DW model. The Petrophysical DW Model The purpose of this model is to account for the resistivity behavior of clayey sands. For petrophysical considerations, a clayey formation is characterized by its total porosity, ft; its formation factor, F0; its water saturation, SwT; its bulk conductivity, Ct; and its concentration per unit PV of clay counterions, Qv. The formation behaves like a clean formation with identical parameters ft, F0, and Swt but containing a water whose conductivity, Cwe, differs from the bulk formation water. Neither the type of clays nor their distribution influences the results. Since the formation obeys Archie's laws,Equation 1 The clayey sand equivalent water conductivity, Cwe, can be considered a mixture of two waters. 1. A clay water surrounds the clay particles but has a conductivity independent of the type and amount of clay. Its conductivity, Ccw, comes exclusively from the clay counterions. The volume fraction of clay water, Vcw, is directly proportional to the counterion concentration, QvEquation 2 where vQ is the amount of clay water associated with 1 unit (meq) of clay counterions. 2. The water further away from the clay is called far water. Its conductivity, Cw, and ionic concentration correspond to the salinity of bulk-formation water. The volume fraction of this water, Vfw, is the balance between the total water content and the clay water.Equation 3 The implicit assumption is that the far water is displaced preferentially by hydrocarbons.


2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (06) ◽  
pp. 711-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Francis Worthington

Summary A user-friendly type chart has been constructed as an aid to the evaluation of water saturation from well logs. It provides a basis for the inter-reservoir comparison of electrical character in terms of adherence to, or departures from, Archie conditions in the presence of significant shaliness and/or low formation-water salinity. Therefore, it constitutes an analog facility. The deliverables include reservoir classification to guide well-log analysis, a protocol for optimizing the acquisition of special core data in support of log analysis, and reservoir characterization in terms of an (analog) porosity exponent and saturation exponent. The type chart describes a continuum of electrical behavior for both water and hydrocarbon zones. This is important because some reservoir rocks can conform to Archie conditions in the fully water-saturated state, but show pronounced departures from Archie conditions in the partially water-saturated state. In this respect, the chart is an extension of earlier approaches that were restricted to the water zone. This extension is achieved by adopting a generalized geometric factor—the ratio of water conductivity to formation conductivity—regardless of the degree of hydrocarbon saturation. The type chart relates a normalized form of this geometric factor to formation-water conductivity, a "shale" conductivity term, and (irreducible) water saturation. The chart has been validated using core data from comprehensively studied reservoirs. A workflow details the application of the type chart to core and/or log data. The analog role of the chart is illustrated for reservoir units that show different levels of non-Archie effects. The application of the method should take rock types, scale effects, the degree of core sampling, and net reservoir criteria into account. The principal benefit is a reduced uncertainty in the choice of a procedure for the petrophysical evaluation of water saturation, especially at an early stage in the appraisal/development process, when adequate characterizing data may not be available. Introduction One of the ever-present problems in petrophysics is how to carry out a meaningful evaluation of well logs in situations where characterizing information from quality-assured core analysis is either unavailable or is insufficient to satisfactorily support the log interpretation. This problem is especially pertinent at an early stage in the life of a field, when reservoir data are relatively sparse. Data shortfalls could be mitigated if there was a means of identifying petrophysical analogs of reservoir character, so that the broader experience of the hydrocarbon industry could be utilized in constructing reservoir models and thence be brought to bear on current appraisal and development decisions. Here, a principal requirement calls for type charts of petrophysical character, on which data from different reservoirs can be plotted and compared, as a basis for aligning approaches to future data acquisition and interpretation. This need manifests itself strongly in the petrophysical evaluation of water saturation, a process that traditionally uses the electrical properties of a reservoir rock to deliver key building blocks for an integrated reservoir model. The solution to this problem calls for an analog facility through which the electrical character of a subject reservoir can be compared with others that have been more comprehensively studied. In this way, the degree of confidence in log-derived water saturation might be reinforced. At the limit, the log analyst needs a reference basis for recourse to capillary pressure data in cases where the well-log evaluation of water saturation turns out to be prohibitively uncertain.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 354-357
Author(s):  
Shixiong Yuan ◽  
Haimin Guo ◽  
Yu Ding ◽  
Rui Deng

According to core data, this paper studies variation of resistivity in different pore structures and wettability conditions. The results show that with the increase of pore structure index m, the resistivity will increase significantly when the saturation is constant. Similarly, with increasing saturation index n, the resistivity will also increase even with the same saturation. With fixed m and n, the calculated formation water saturation will be very high, resulting in hydrocarbon reservoir being ignored. This variation characteristic is significant for the identification of hidden reservoir with atypical Archie formula.


2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 291
Author(s):  
Bert Filippi ◽  
Bahman Joodi ◽  
Mohammad Sarmadivaleh

Populating water saturation is a critical step in dynamic modelling. This work introduces a different height function that equates directly with the Leverett-J formula. In doing so, the model initialises under quiescent conditions without the need for end-point scaling. The resulting water saturation is a function of permeability, porosity, clay volume and height above the free water level. The Vcl—or clay content—is an important feature in this formulation because it compensates between extreme values of permeability and porosity. This peer-reviewed paper describes how a single height function was sufficient to match the log-derived water saturation for all wells in the Coracle sand of the Surprise Field in the North Sea. The process involved fitting a simple height formula, with the least possible parameters, to the J-function calculated from all the special core analysis (SCAL) data. These parameters were then tuned to match the log-derived water saturation. This technique was subsequently used in other fields where a single height function, which honoured the measured capillary pressures, accurately matched water saturation in all of the wells.


Author(s):  
Omar Al-Farisi ◽  
Hadi Belhaj ◽  
Fatmah Yammahi ◽  
Abdulla Al-Shemsi ◽  
Hocine Khemissa

Rock typing is one of the most important steps in reservoir modeling, and it’s the main task in reservoir characterization. In carbonate, the rock typing work that’s been performed during the last two decades had a little progress in term of providing reliable estimation of reservoir behavior. However, the development of Conjunction Rock Properties Convergence, CROPC, a carbonate rock typing concept that provided an important and easy solution to the carbonate rock typing gaps, has a major breakthrough, even though, CROPC methodology was developed to capture the single pore network through the conjunction of Lithology, permeability, capillary pressure and water saturation. Therefore, the need to identify more complex carbonate pore network had led to the initiation of developing the Carbonate Rock Type Matrix RocMat, which will be detailed in this paper, as part of a Master of Science research project. In this novel concept the carbonate rocks were classified into homogeneous, single pore network, and heterogeneous rocks, dual and triple pore network with the utilization of the effective petrophysical properties of permeability, capillary pressure, saturation, porosity and height above free water level, all were classified in a conjunction matrix that honors these properties and at the same time enables generating sub groups as down scaling and estimation for unseen groups with infinite rock complexity capturing, at the same time it enables the ease to lump the groups and generates upscale-groups that make it easier for utilization by the geologist and reservoir engineers to achieve the objective of better reservoir performance prediction, the work was performed and then tested in two carbonate offshore fields data. This RocMat was structured to be the ultimate catalog for carbonate rock types.


Materials ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 2884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamila Gawel ◽  
Mohammad Ali Taghipour Khadrbeik ◽  
Ruben Bjørge ◽  
Sigurd Wenner ◽  
Bartlomiej Gawel ◽  
...  

Cement nanocomposites with carbon nanofibers (CNFs) are electrically conductive and sensitive to mechanical loads. These features make them useful for sensing applications. The conductive and load sensing properties are well known to be dependent on carbon nanofiber content; however, much less is known about how the conductivity of hybrid cement–CNF depend on other parameters (e.g., water to cement ratio (w/c), water saturation of pore spaces and temperatures above ambient temperature). In this paper we fill-in these knowledge gaps by: (1) determining a relationship between the cement–CNF bulk resistivity and w/c ratio; (2) determining the effect of water present in the pores on bulk resistivity; (3) describing the resistivity changes upon temperature changes up to 180 °C. Our results show that the increase in the water to cement ratio results in increased bulk resistivity. The decrease in nanocomposite resistivity upon a stepwise temperature increase up to 180 °C was found to be related to free water release from cement pores and the dry materials were relatively insensitive to temperature changes. The re-saturation of pores with water was not reversible with respect to electrical resistivity. The results also suggest that the change in the type of electrical connection can lead to two orders of magnitude different bulk resistivity results for the same material. It is expected that the findings from this paper will contribute to application of cement–CNF-based sensors at temperatures higher than ambient temperature.


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