Beginner's Guide To Petrophysics
Beginner's Guide To Petrophysics
Beginner's Guide To Petrophysics
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An aquifer drive mechanism usually maintains the reservoir pressure for some time but may drop off gradually.
Recovery factors vary from 30 to 80% of the oil in place. The oil water contact rises as production depletes the oil. A
gas cap drive pushes oil out as the gas expands. Recovery factor is similar to aquifer drive. There may or may not be
some aquifer support. the gas oil contact drops as the oil is depleted. Gas expansion reservoirs do not have aquifer
or gas cap support. Gas dissolved in the oil expels oil into the well bore because the pressure at the well bore is
below the reservoir pressure. Recovery factor is awful - usually less than 10%, but this can be improved to maybe
20% by injecting water nearby to increase or maintain the reservoir pressure. Water floods, carbon dioxide injection,
and re-injection of produced gas or water can be used in nearly any reservoir to improve recovery efficiency.
Gas wells do not need pumps, but if they also produce water, a special process called artificial lift is used to get the
water out. That water is also disposed of legally.
The economics of a reservoir varies with improving technology. Bypassed reservoirs,
discovered and ignored years ago, are now economic due to technical improvements in
drilling practices and reservoir stimulation techniques. Horizontal wells and deep water
drilling are now common. The use of heat or steam to assist production of heavy oil or
bitumen, and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing to stimulate production in tighter reservoirs
are relatively new techniques and relatively economic today. Obviously the specific price
of oil or gas after delivery to the customer plays an important role in how much effort can
be expended to recover oil and gas from underground.
There is controversy, of course, about new technology. Just as the Luddites resisted the weaving machines in the
early 1800's, modern Luddites insist that the old ways of oil and gas extraction are best, while at the same time
complaining loudly about the price of gasoline at the pumps or the cost of electricity for their air conditioners. You
can't have low-cost and low-tech at the same time.
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Green alternatives are 50 to 100 years away. Every green technology needs oil to make the required plastics and fuel
the manufacturing and delivery systems. The electricity grid is far too fragile to fuel extensive use of electric vehicles
anywhere, let alone everywhere. And where would all that electricity come from (coal?). Clean coal is more
oxymoronic than military intelligence. So if you and the other 7 Billion people on this planet want to live a
comfortable life, get used to oil and its risks. Staying in bed is risky too -- more people die in bed than anywhere else.
For the record, I've been off the grid with wind or solar since 1984. But I live in the middle of nowhere so the esthetics
don't bother the neighbours. What have you done to green-up this world?
BASIC PETROPHYSICS
"Last week, I couldn't spell Petrophysicist. Now I are one." That describes me in 1962
as I moved from Montreal to Red Deer, Alberta to run well logs for a company called
Schlumberger. The word petrophysics had been coined 20 years earlier by a geologist
named Gus Archie and it wasn't used much back in the day. Lately it has attained a
certain cachet, denoting a professional level career path.
What is a "well log" you ask. It is a record of measurements of physical properties of
rocks taken in a well bore, usually drilled for oil or gas, but possibly for ground water
or minerals. Think of a ship's log. The first record of such a log dates back to 1846
when Lord Kelvin measured temperature versus depth in water wells in England, from
which he deduced that the Earth was 7000 years old. The fact that he was wrong is not
important. Log analysis is an imperfect science.
Illustration of a wireline logging job: logging truck with computer cabin, cable and
winch (right), cable strung from winch into drilling rig derrick and lowered into bore
hole, with logging tool at the end of the cable. Logs are recording while pulling the tool
up the hole. Logs can also be run with special tools located at the bottom of the drilling
string, or conventional tools can be conveyed on coiled tubing or drill pipe ==>
The first logs for oil field investigation were run by the Schlumberger brothers, Marcel
and Conrad, in 1928 in Pechebron, France. Soon, the service migrated to North and
South America, Russia, and other locations in Asia. At that time, the only measurement
that could be made was of the electrical resistivity of the rocks. High resistivity meant
porous rock with oil or gas, or porous rock with fresh water, or tight rock with very low
porosity. Low resistivity meant porous rock with salty water or shale. Take your pick.
Local knowledge helped.
One virtue of the well log was that the top and bottom of each rock layer could be
defined quite accurately. When the log and depths were compared to the rock sample
chips created by the drilling process, a reasonable geological interpretation might be
possible, but was far from infallible.
By 1932, the spontaneous potential (SP) measurement was added. The analysis rules
expanded: low SP meant shale, or tight rock, or fresh water. High values meant salt
water with or without oil or gas in a porous rock. The resistivity could then be used to decide on water versus
hydrocarbons. Perfect. Except there were lots of shades of grey and the SP was not always capable of defining
anything.
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Logs from 1932 in Oil City-Titusville area, Pennsylvania, the location of Edwin Drake's "First Oil Well" (in the USA - 6
other countries had oil wells predating this one). His well was only 69 feet deep, so it penetrated just to the top of
these logs, which found deeper and more prolific reservoirs. Each pair of curves represents the measured data
versus depth for one well. The SP is the left hand curve of each pair; deflections to the left (shaded) show porous
rock. The resistivity is the curve on the right of each pair. Deflections to the right (shaded) show high resistivity, and
when combined with a good SP deflection, indicate oil zones. Some good quality rocks in this example do not have
high resistivity and are most likely water bearing.
The gamma ray log appeared in 1936. The rules were easy: low value equaled porous reservoir or tight rocks. High
values were shale. It said nothing about fluid content.
By 1942, Gus Archie had defined a couple of quantitative methods that turned analysis into a mathematical game,
instead of just some simple rules of thumb. His major work established a relationship between resistivity, water
saturation, and porosity. If we knew porosity from rock samples measured in the lab, and a few other parameters, we
could calculate water saturation from the resistivity log values. This was really new news.
He even attempted to calculate porosity from the resistivity log. This worked in high quality (high porosity) reservoirs
but had problems in low quality rocks or heavy oil.
Just after 1945, a method that investigated the
response of rocks to neutron bombardment
became available. The neutron log was the first
porosity indicating well log. High values meant
low porosity or high porosity with gas. Low
values meant high porosity with oil or water, or
shale. Add the gamma ray log, SP, and resistivity
and again the world was perfect, except for all
those shades of grey. Calibrating the response to
porosity depended on a lot of well bore
environmental parameters (hole size, mud
weight, temperature) so it was not terribly
accurate.
It wasn't until 1958 that the measurement of the
velocity (or travel time) of sound through rocks in
a well bore was achieved. It turned out that the
travel time was a linear function of porosity and a
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Advertisements for my two major forays into the software business: LOG/MATE 1976 (left), META/LOG (1986)
We now call the business "Integrated Petrophysics" because we use much more than log data to get our answers.
Lab data from core analysis, such as porosity, permeability and grain density, are critical input parameters used to
calibrate our work. More exotic lab measurements have become more common as we move into unconventional
reservoir types like shale gas and tight oil prospects.
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Drilling Records
Mud Logs
Core Descriptions
Measurements While Drilling
Logging While Drilling
Seismic While Drilling
DATA TYPES After Drilling
Conventional Open Hole Logs
Image Logs
Thin Bed Tools and Processing
Petrophysical Analysis Results
Geological Correlations / Maps
Seismic Analysis / VSP
Test Results
Core Analysis Results
DATA TYPES - Open Hole Logs
Resistivity and Resistivity Imaging
Acoustic and Full Wave Acoustic
Natural and Spectral Gamma Ray
Formation Density and Litho Density
Neutron Porosity
Dipmeter and Deviation Surveys
Formation Imager and Televiewer
Electromagnetic
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Induced Gamma Ray Spectroscopy
Pulsed Neutron and Activation
Pressure Profiles / Sample Taker
Sidewall Cores
DATA TYPES After Completion
Cased Hole Logging
Reservoir Description Logs
Production Logs
Casing / Cement Evaluation Logs
Bottom Hole Pressure Survey
Well Test Results
Initial Production / AOF / IPR
DATA TYPES Special Cases
Horizontal / Deviated Wells
Logging Through Drill Pipe
Coiled Tubing Logging
DATA TYPES Core Data
Conventional Core Analysis
Permeability, Porosity, Saturation
Grain Density Lithology Description
Special Core Analysis
Electrical Properties
Capillary Pressure
Relative Permeability
Thin Section Petrography
Scanning Electron Micrographs
X-Ray Diffraction
Infra-red Mineralogy
Core Imaging
White Light
Ultra Violet Light
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Production Optimization
Economic Analysis
Is The Well/Pool/Project Any Good?
DATA USES - Completion Applications
Perforating Interval
Stress Regime / Orientation
Hydraulic Fracture Design
Acidizing / Other Treatments
Sand Control
Maximize Productivity
Are There More Targets?
Is production maximized?
DATA USES - Production Applications
Through Casing Reservoir Description
Fluid Identification
Cement Evaluation
Casing Inspection
Flow and Production Analysis
Gas Leak Detection
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X-Ray
CT Scans
DATA TYPES Fluid Properties
Density, Viscosity
Water Resistivity, Chemical Analysis
Oil / Gas Analyses
DATA TYPES Pressure Transient
Pressure versus Time
Buildup or Drawdown
Horner / Ramey Plots
PBU Modeling / Curve Fitting
Static Wellhead Pressure
Static Bottom Hole Pressure
DATA TYPES Production Data
Oil / Gas / Water Rates
Changes With Time
Completion History
Well / Pool / Reservoir Summaries
Deliverability Analysis Results
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Crains Rule Minus 1: Identify log curves available, and determine their scales.
The left half of this image shows a resistivity log with spontaneous potential (SP) in Track 1 and shallow, medium,
and deep resistivity (RESS, RESM, RESD) on a logarithmic track to the right of the depth track. The right half of the
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image shows a density neutron log with gamma ray (GR) and caliper (CAL) in Track 1. Photo electric effect (PE) is in
Track 2 with neutron porosity (PHIN) and density porosity (PHID) spread across Tracks 2 and 3.
Crains Rule #0: Gamma ray or SP deflections to the left indicate cleaner sands, deflections to the right are shaly.
Draw clean and shale lines, then interpolate linearly between clean and shale lines to visually estimate Shale
Volume (Vsh).
To find clean zones versus shale zones, examine the spontaneous potential (SP) response, gamma ray (GR)
response, and density neutron separation. Low values of GR, highly negative values of SP, or density neutron curves
falling close to each other usually indicate low shale volume. High GR values, no SP deflection, or large separation
on density neutron curves normally indicate high shale volume.
Very shaly beds are not Zones of Interest. Everything else, including very shaly sands (Vsh < 0.50) and even
obvious water zones, are interesting. Although a zone may be water bearing, it is still a useful source of log analysis
information, and is still a zone of interest at this stage.
Crains Rule #1: The average of density and neutron porosity in a clean zone (regardless of mineralogy) is a good
first estimate for Effective Porosity (PHIe).
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Crains Rule #2: The density porosity in a shaly sand is a good first estimate for Effective Porosity (PHIe),
provided logs are on Sandstone Units.
For zones of interest, draw bed boundaries (horizontal lines). Then review the porosity logs: sonic, density, and
neutron. All porosity logs deflect to the left for increased porosity. If density neutron data is available, estimate
porosity in clean sands by averaging the two log values. In shaly sands, read the density porosity. IMPORTANT: This
is just an estimate and not a final answer.
Scale the sonic log based on the assumed matrix lithology. Mark coal and salt beds, which appear to have very high
apparent porosity. Identify zones which show high medium, low, or no porosity. Low porosity, high shale content,
coal, and salt beds are no longer interesting.
Crains Rule #3: Tracking of porosity with resistivity on an overlay usually indicates water or shale.
OR
Low resistivity with moderate to high porosity usually indicates water or shale.
Crains Rule #4: Crossover of porosity on a resistivity log overlay usually indicates hydrocarbons.
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OR
High resistivity with moderate to high porosity usually indicates hydrocarbons.
Raw logs showing resistivity porosity overlay. Red shading indicates possible hydrocarbon zones. The density or
density porosity (solid red curve) is placed on top of the deep resistivity curve (dashed red curve). Line up the two
curves so that they lie on top of each other in obvious water zones. If there are no obvious water zones, line them up
in the shale zones. If the porosity curve falls to the LEFT of the resistivity curve, as in Layers A and B, hydrocarbons
are probably present.
To find hydrocarbon indications and obvious water zones, compare deep resistivity to porosity, by mentally or
physically overlaying the density porosity on top of the resistivity log. High porosity (deflections on the density log to
the left) and high resistivity (deflections to the right) usually indicate oil or gas, or fresh water. See red shaded area
on resistivity track on the log above.
Layer A above is a shaly sand and has medium porosity. Layers B and C are clean sands and have high porosity. All
other layers are shale with no useful porosity.
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The average of density and neutron porosity in Layers B is 24 %; Layer C is 19%. This is close to the final answer
because there is not much shale in these zones. The average in Layer A is 16 % - much higher than the truth due to
the influence of the shale in the zone. The density porosity is about 11%, pretty close to the core data. Therefore all
our analysis must make use of shale correction methods.
Low resistivity and high porosity usually means water, as in Layer C. Known DST, production, or mud log indications
of oil or gas are helpful indicators.
Layer B and Layer A show crossover when the porosity is traced on the resistivity log, so these zones remain
interesting. In fresher water formations, it is often difficult or impossible to spot hydrocarbons visually. If it was easy,
log analysts would be out of work!
Crossover on the density neutron log sometimes means gas (not seen on the above example). Watch for rough hole
problems, sandstone recorded on a limestone scale, or limestone recorded on a dolomite scale, which can also show
crossover not caused by gas.
Water zones with high porosity and low resistivity are called obvious water zones. Fresh water may look like
hydrocarbons, particularly in shallow zones. The lack of SP development will often help distinguish fresh water
zones. Low porosity water zones may not be obvious.
Crains Rule #5: Approximate Water Saturation (SWa) in an obvious hydrocarbon zone is estimated from: SWa =
Constant / PHIe / (1 - Vsh)
where Constant is in the range from 0.0100 to 0.1200.
Use 0.0400 as a first try in sands, 0.0600 to 0.0800 in shaly sands, and 0.0250 in intercrystalline carbonates.
Water saturation is usually calculated from the Archie equation or a shale corrected version of it. This is not easy to
do with mental arithmetic. An easier estimate of water saturation can be made in obvious hydrocarbon zones by
using a method attributed to Buckles, and it is commonly used by reservoir engineers in a hurry.
Here is the computer output from the
data in the logs used in the visual
analysis shown above. ==>
This depth plot is typical of a straight
forward petrophysical analysis. Some
raw data curves are presented because
most people find them helpful in
correlating the zones of interest. From
left to right are gamma ray (GR),
spontaneous potential (SP), then three
different resistivity curves (RESD, RESM,
RESS) with the depth numbers in
between them and the GR / SP track.
Next come some answers, from left to
right, water saturation (SW), porosity
(PHIe), permeability (Perm), and the
mineral breakdown on the right. This
latter track shows only shale and quartz
in this example.
The solid red shading in the porosity
track is the oil in the porosity. More red
is good news. The white area to the right
of the oil is the water volume in the
reservoir.
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