Colmatation of reservair rocks in the operation of oil fields as a result of cation exchange

By analyzing the changes in seawater pumped to maintain reservoir pressure (FPD), the anhydrous granitoid reservoir of the White Tiger deposit, in which the cracks are partially filled with calcium minerals (calcite and lomontite), shows that these minerals interact with the injected seawater. Hydrogeochemical modeling of this process showed that cations of seawater are first sodium and then magnesium displace calcium from the lomonite exchange complex, which leads to precipitation of anhydrite and a small amount of calcite. The incoming water dissolves the anhydrite and precipitates it downstream, forming a gradually expanding annular region with a constant increase in the amount of precipitated anhydrite. As a result, there is a decrease in the permeability of the fracture medium due to the filling of the cracks with anhydrite. A large amount of calcium in the associated waters when they rise to the surface causes the precipitation of calcite in the production wells and surface equipment. The transition of drilling to ever greater depths, where the rocks contain lomontite almost everywhere, requires taking into account the phenomena of cation exchange between the injected water and the rock in the predictions of scaling.

Full-azimuth anisotropic prestack time migration in the local-angle domain and its applications on fracture detection

Considering that geologic structures disturb prestack amplitude relationships, anisotropic migration is thus advocated not only for extracting azimuth-preserved common image gathers (CIGs), but also for preserving fracture-induced amplitude responses. However, most conventional anisotropic migration methods are hindered by their inefficiency in either modeling azimuthal traveltime variations at large offsets or characterizing subsurface reflections. Given that prestack time migration is widely applied for most practical purposes, we began with reformulations on a quartic traveltime formula, through which a new set of anisotropic parameters was developed. Then, an anisotropic migration method was established in the local-angle domain (LAD) for more reasonable uses of subsurface wavefield information. We also used a traveltime inversion scheme to estimate those anisotropic parameters required by anisotropic migration. Using this methodology on a physical model with a fracture medium, we derived better focused CIGs by thoroughly correcting the anisotropic effects of overburden. As a result, predicted properties of the fracture medium showed fewer interventions of geologic impacts. In a field example, a comprehensive study was performed on a deep carbonate reservoir to examine influences of different anisotropic migration algorithms on ultimate fracture prediction. Comparisons of the signal-to-noise ratio and agreements with formation microimage information reconfirmed the superiority of LAD anisotropic migration in recovering true properties of subsurface fractures, relative to routine methods (i.e., azimuth-sectored migration and anisotropic migration in the surface-offset domain).