|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
| JOURNAL HOME | HELP | CONTACT PUBLISHER | SUBSCRIBE | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
1 Center for Petroleum Studies, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BP, United Kingdom; mattjack{at}imperial.ac.uk
2 Center for Petroleum Studies, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BP, United Kingdom; present address: Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas; shuji{at}mail.utexas.edu
3 Center for Petroleum Studies, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BP, United Kingdom
4 Center for Petroleum Studies, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BP, United Kingdom
Matthew Jackson is a lecturer in petroleum reservoir engineering at Imperial College London. His research interests include the impact of geological heterogeneity on flow during hydrocarbon recovery, the development of new reservoir and outcrop modeling techniques, and the optimal application of smart-well technology. He is a graduate in physics from Imperial College London and holds a Ph.D. in geological fluid mechanics from the University of Liverpool.Shuji Yoshida has a B.Eng. degree (mining engineering) from Kyushu University, Japan, an M.Sc. degree (petroleum geology) from Imperial College London, United Kingdom, and a Ph.D. (basin analysis) from Toronto University, Canada. He has held industry and postdoctoral positions in reservoir characterization (Imperial College), coastal geomorphology (Royal Holloway, University of London), and hydrocarbon exploration (University of Wyoming). His main interest is shallow-marine and nonmarine sedimentology.
Ann Muggeridge is a senior lecturer in petroleum engineering at Imperial College. Her research interests include modeling the influence of reservoir heterogeneities on oil recovery and upscaling. Before joining Imperial College, she worked in simulation technical support at Scientific Software Inc. (United Kingdom) and as a research reservoir engineer at BP.
Howard Johnson holds the Shell Chair of Petroleum Geology at Imperial College London. His main interests are in clastic sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy, reservoir characterization, and basin studies. Previously, he spent 15 years with Shell working in research, exploration and development geology, and petroleum engineering. He holds a B.Sc. degree in geology from the University of Liverpool and a D.Phil. in sedimentology from the University of Oxford.
Tidal sandstone reservoirs contain significant intervals of hydrocarbon-bearing heterolithic facies, characterized by the presence of tide-generated sedimentary structures such as flaser, wavy, and lenticular bedding (millimeter to centimeter sand-mud alternations). We have characterized the reservoir properties (sandstone connectivity, effective permeability, and displacement efficiency) of these facies using three-dimensional (3-D) models reconstructed directly from large rock specimens. The models are significantly larger than a core plug, but smaller than a typical reservoir model grid block. We find that the key control on reservoir quality is the connectivity and continuity of the sandstone and mudstone layers. If the sandstone layers form a connected network, they are likely to be productive even at low values of net-to-gross (about 0.3–0.5). This may explain why the productivity of low net-to-gross, heterolithic tidal sandstones is commonly underestimated or overlooked. Connectivity is the dominant control on the transition between productive (pay) and nonproductive (nonpay) heterolithic facies. However, connectivity is difficult to characterize because core plugs sampled from the subsurface are too small to capture connectivity, whereas two-dimensional outcrop measurements can significantly underestimate the true 3-D value. Our results suggest that core-plug measurements of permeability and displacement efficiency are unlikely to yield representative values at the scale of a reservoir model grid block because the connectivity and continuity of sandstone and mudstone layers varies significantly with length scale.
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  G. de Jager, J. F. M. Van Doren, J. D. Jansen, and S. M. Luthi An evaluation of relevant geological parameters for predicting the flow behaviour of channelized reservoirs Petroleum Geoscience, November 1, 2009; 15(4): 345 - 354. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 R. P. Sech, M. D. Jackson, and G. J. Hampson Three-dimensional modeling of a shoreface-shelf parasequence reservoir analog: Part 1. Surface-based modeling to capture high-resolution facies architecture AAPG Bulletin, September 1, 2009; 93(9): 1155 - 1181. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 H. D. Enge, S. J. Buckley, A. Rotevatn, and J. A. Howell From outcrop to reservoir simulation model: Workflow and procedures Geosphere, December 1, 2007; 3(6): 469 - 490. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
O. Falivene, P. Arbues, A. Gardiner, G. Pickup, J. A. Munoz, and L. Cabrera Best practice stochastic facies modeling from a channel-fill turbidite sandstone analog (the Quarry outcrop, Eocene Ainsa basin, northeast Spain) AAPG Bulletin, July 1, 2006; 90(7): 1003 - 1029. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
| JOURNAL HOME | HELP | CONTACT PUBLISHER | SUBSCRIBE | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
