A New Approach for Rock Typing Using Dimensional Analysis: A Case Study of Carbonate Reservoir
- Authors
- Mohammad Abdullah (Kuwait Foreign Petroelum Exploration Company) | Ali Garrouch (Kuwait University)
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.2118/198026-MS
- Document ID
- SPE-198026-MS
- Publisher
- Society of Petroleum Engineers
- Source
- SPE Kuwait Oil & Gas Show and Conference, 13-16 October, Mishref, Kuwait
- Publication Date
- 2019
- Document Type
- Conference Paper
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 978-1-61399-674-4
- Copyright
- 2019. Society of Petroleum Engineers
- Keywords
- rock typing, dimensional analysis, flow zone indicator, hydraulic flow unit, permeability
- Downloads
- 15 in the last 30 days
- 51 since 2007
- Show more detail
- View rights & permissions
SPE Member Price: | USD 9.50 |
SPE Non-Member Price: | USD 28.00 |
In recent years, Petrophysicists have established that rock typing is an essential pre-requisite for estimating permeability in reservoir rocks. Any attempt that does not use rock typing for modeling permeability has been documented to be characterized by a large data scatter and associated with high uncertainty.
In this paper, four common rock typing techniques are compared: Pittman, Lucia, Flow Zone Indicator (FZI), and Global Hydraulic Element (GHE). The performance of these rock typing approaches is assessed through intrinsic models for their ability to predict the permeability of a prominent carbonate field. The FZI and the Pittman approaches gave the best estimates of permeability with a coefficient of determination of approximately 0.98. By contrast, the Lucia approach gave the least precise estimates of permeability with a coefficient of determination of 0.81. The GHE approach gave a satisfactory estimation with a coefficient of determination of 0.90.
A new technique for rock typing, based on dimensional analysis, is presented. Dimensional analysis leads to the derivation of two dimensionless groups: (λ) and (Ω). The λ group is a dimensionless Flow Zone Indicator (FZI) and the (Ω) group is the dimensionless photo-electric adsorption. The main advantage of the dimensional analysis technique is that it relies directly on open hole log measurements, such as the spontaneous potential, bulk density, interval transit time, and photoelectric absorption. A unique power-law relationship exists between the dimensionless FZI group (λ), and the dimensionless photo-electric adsorption group (Ω). For the studied carbonate field, a coefficient of determination of 0.98 was obtained when estimating reservoir permeability with the dimensional analysis rock typing.
This paper will be of interest to subsurface modelers who need to estimate permeability. Using the dimensional analysis approach described and comparing this new method of estimation with established methods, it is proposed that rock typing by dimensional analysis for estimating permeability can be used as an alternative method.
File Size | 6 MB | Number of Pages | 22 |
Amaefule, J. O., Altunbay, M., Tiab, D., Kersey, D. G., & Keelan, D. K. (1993, January). Enhanced reservoir description: using core and log data to identify hydraulic (flow) units and predict permeability in uncored intervals/wells. In SPE annual technical conference and exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Corbett, P. W. M., & Potter, D. K. (2004, October). Petrotyping: A basemap and atlas for navigating through permeability and porosity data for reservoir comparison and permeability prediction. In Paper SCA2004-30 presented at the International Symposium of the Society of Core Analysts (Vol. 5, No. 9).
Garrouch, A.A., and Al-Dousari, M.M., and Al-Sarraf, Z. (2019). A pragmatic approach for optimizing gas lift operations. Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology, in press, DOI 10.1007/s13202-019-0733-7.
Garrouch, A.A., and Al-Sultan, A. A. (2019). Exploring the link between the flow zone indicator and key open-hole log measurements: an application of dimensional analysis. Petroleum Geoscience, 25, 219–234. https://doi.org/10.1144/petgeo2018-035.