Reservoir analysis and characterization

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
TO RESERVOIR
For graduated program
Tran Van Xuan
HoChiMinh City University of Technology
2016

Layout:
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.

Reservoir Characterization
General to reservoir
Fundamental physical properties of a
reservoir
Primary factors controlling porosity &
permeability
Atypical Reservoirs Rocks

Reservoir Characterization

Instructional Objectives
Define reservoir characterization
List the different areas that may be involved in
reservoir characterization
List the different sources of data that may be
used in a full reservoir characterization project
Explain the importance of reservoir
characterization
4
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Intro Reservoir

Reservoir Characterization
Definitions
Reservoir Characterization encompasses all techniques and
methods that:

Improves our understanding of the geological

and petrophysical controls of fluid flow.
Reservoir Characterization is a continuous process:
from initial field discovery (Than Nong, Kinh Ngu)
to the last phases of production and abandonment (Bach Ho)

Reservoir Characterization
Definitions

Reservoir characterization is a process for quantitatively

assigning reservoir properties, recognizing geologic
information and uncertainty in spatial variability.

(Lake and Carroll, 1986)

Provide a quantitative description of reservoir properties

to a numerical simulator with enough detail so that the
predicted fluid-flow characteristics match the historical
performance and predict future performance of the reservoir.
(Fowler et. Al., 1999)

Reservoir Characterization
Some Facts
More than 75% of current additions to the worlds oil
reserves comes from better management of existing
reservoirs.
Profitability depends on increasing recovery from
producing fields
Reservoir Characterization is the key to Reservoir
Management
Multidisciplinary Teams are the key to Reservoir
Characterization

Reservoir Characterization
Key issues
The general problem facing the Reservoir Team is the
blank area between the wells. Accurately simulating field
performance requires knowing the petrophysical
properties throughout the reservoir.
Sparse wells provides a majority of the hard information,
but may occupy only 1-billionth of the total reservoir
volume.
Seismic data provides interwell details, but vertical
resolution is still somewhat limiting.

How to transform this paucity of data (and diverse data

types) into a realistic geological model for simulating fluid
flow is an industry priority.
10

Reservoir Characterization
Key questions
What does the reservoir look like?
Whats is the external geometry?
Whats the continuity of pore spaces and fluids.

What is the drive mechanism?

Will the reservoir have a natural water drive? If so,
whats the aquifer geometry, continuity, and strength?

Where should the wells (platforms) be located?

11

Reservoir Characterization
Key questions
How should the wells be perforated and completed?
Will water or/and gas injection be needed and when?

Will recoveries be better by water or gas displacement?

Will EOR processes be needed and when?
What will oil prices do in the future (30 USD @ the end of 2015)?

12

Reservoir Characterization
What Is It?

Reservoir characterization may be defined as

providing a full description of the reservoir in order
to predict the reservoir behavior.

11
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Intro Reservoir

Full description (or characterization) of the

reservoir includes the following:
The geological model of the reservoir
Petrophysical parameters
Fluid type
Drive mechanism(s)

Predicting the reservoir behavior involves

knowing:
How much the wells will produce of each phase (oil,
gas, and water)
The problems the wells may have (e.g. excess water
or gas production)
The wells or reservoir reaction to different producing
strategies (e.g. artificial lift, stimulation, secondary or
EOR/IOR projects).

Reservoir Characterization
How do we do it?
The tools and techniques used in reservoir
characterization range from a simple analogy
to a fully integrated approach that combines
information and interpretations from different
sources.

14
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Intro Reservoir

The sources of data available to petroleum

professionals include:

Geophysical data
Geological information
Well log (open and cased hole) and core data
Pressure and production measurements
Fluid laboratory tests

All of these data require professional analysis and

interpretation to be useful in reservoir
characterization.

Several techniques are available to help the

professionals use and interpret the data.
These techniques include:

Geophysical,
Geological,
Geostatistical,
Open and cased hole logging interpretations techniques,
Pressure transient analysis (PTA),
Production data analysis, and
Reservoir simulation.

Reservoir Characterization
Why Do We Do It?
We perform reservoir characterization to
understand the reservoir (or wells) problems
and identify the reservoir (or wells) potential
We can then take actions to economically
increase both the production and the reserves
of the reservoir.

17
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Intro Reservoir

 The actions that can be taken to increase

production rate and/or reserves are numerous.
These actions have to be economically studied to
justify their implementation.
Several actions may be suitable to one particular
problem.
In this case, the most economically attractive
action should be chosen.

18
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Intro Reservoir

 Typical actions include:

shutting-in some wells,
recompleting wells,
stimulating wells,
installing artificial lift,
drilling new wells,
installing water or gas injection programs,
and installing an Enhanced and or Improved Oil
Recovery (EOR/IOR) project.
19
Charct

Intro Reservoir

Exercise 1
List five different sources of data we use to
help characterize the reservoir
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

20
Charct

Intro Reservoir

Predicting Reservoir Heterogeneity

Assessing Uncertainty
Geologists are
idiots!!

?
19

Its perfect!

The Reservoir
Engineer

Now its perfect!!

The Geologist
The Same Geologist

Lt ct a chn bin (PSTM)

by well path 10 701 715 -702 -19 - 9 BH [II-II]

4850

13

Reservoir Characterization
Economic Importance

Petroleum engineers first recognized reservoir

heterogeneity as a significant factor influencing
secondary and tertiary oil recovery efficiencies
during the 1950s.

The use of oversimplified geological models

based on data from a limited number of widely
spaced wells is probably one of the
most important reasons for the failure in
predicting field performance. (Damsleth et. al.,

1992)

14

Reservoir Characterization
Economic Importance

Oil recovery from most reservoirs as a result

of standard primary and secondary recovery
ranges from 5% to 80% of the OOIP

(National Petroleum Council, 1984).

15

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
TO RESERVOIR

RESERVOIR DEFINITIONS
A single continuous deposit of gas and/or
oil in the pores of a reservoir rock. A
reservoir has a single pressure system and
dont communicate with other reservoirs.
The portion of the trap that contains
petroleum, including the reservoir rock,
pores, and fluids.
(A pond, lake or environment that is used store
liquids).

RESERVOIR TYPICAL TYPES

The only common rock types that normally

have the favorable combination of porosity
and permeability to be reservoirs are
sandstones and carbonates (Figure 01).

Figure 01: Main

reservoir rocks

Age of reservoir rock

Cambrian: <1% of reservoir rocks

Paleozoic: 15% of reservoir rocks
Triassic: <1% of reservoir rocks
Cretaceous: 18% of reservoir rocks
Tertiary: 58% of reservoir rocks
1+15+1+18 +58# 93%???

The Reservoir Rock: Sandstone

An outcrop of pebbly sandstone (at base of cliff) overlain by red sandstone. The
Budleigh-Salterton pebble beds, of Triassic age. A few kilometres to the east
these beds dip into the subsurface, and form part of the oil reservoir at the
Wytch Farm Field, which is Britains largest onshore oil field.

The Reservoir Rock: Dolomite

The Cairns Formation, of Devonian age, exposed near Canmore, in the

Front ranges of the Rocky Mountains, just east of Banff, Alberta. This is
one of the more important reservoir units in the subsurface of Alberta.

The Reservoir Rock: Dolomite

This is an example of an important reservoir rock type. Fossil

stromatoporoids have been hollowed out by the chemical
conversion of limestone to dolomite, creating pore spaces so
large that they are sometimes called cavernous porosity

Making reservoirs today: Limestones

An exposure of modern
limestone in the Florida
Keys. This limestone is only
a few hundred years old. It
shows the structure of coral
and other organic remains.
Note the numerous pore
spaces.
Burial of this limestone
would probably lead to
reduction in porosity as a
result of cementation. Good
quality reservoir rocks, such
as the dolomite shown in
another picture, are created
by dissolution of some of the
rock. This usually occurs
many millions of years after
the initial formation and
burial

Physical characteristics of a
reservoir
Physical characteristics of a reservoir
include original deposition and
subsequent changes, the type of
reservoir, sandstone or carbonate, which
was discussed previously, depth, area,
thickness, porosity, permeability, and
capillary pressure.

1. Depth
Shallow reservoir: Created by the folding of relatively
thick, moderately compacted reservoir rock with
accumulation under an anticline or some trap. The
hydrocarbons would generally be better separated as a
result of lower internal reservoir pressures, less gas in
solution and oil of increased viscosity, resulting from lower
temperatures.
Deep reservoir: Typically created by severe faulting.
The hydrocarbons would be less separated with more
gas in solution and oil of reduced viscosity because of
higher temperatures. There is often a reduction in porosity
and permeability due to increased compaction.

2. Area and Thickness

The total area of a reservoir and its thickness are
of considerable importance in determining if a
reservoir is a commercial one or not. The
greater the area and thickness of the reservoir,
the greater the potential for large accumulations
of oil and gas. However, there are reservoirs
that produce substantial amounts of
hydrocarbons that are not of considerable size.

Fundamental physical
properties of a reservoir

RESERVOIR (cont.)
There are two fundamental physical
properties that a good reservoir must have:
+ Porosity: sufficient void space contain
significant petroleum.
+ Permeability: the ability of petroleum
to flow into, or out of these voids.
The common rock types that have favorable
combination of porosity and permeability to
be
reservoirs
are
sandstones
and
carbonates.

POROSITY
Porosity is the percentage of volume of voids
to the total volume of rock. It has the symbol
: 0 1 (or 0% 100%)
Effective porosity: the amount of internal space
or voids that is interconnected, and so able to
transmit fluids.
Non-effective porosity: isolated pores and
pores volume occupied by adsorbed water.

 Porosity in reservoir rocks is normally

between 10% 20%, but some excellent
reservoirs may have porosities of 30% or
more.
Accumulations in reservoirs with less than
about 5% porosity are usually not
commercial.

Almost all
reservoirs have
porosities in a
range of five to
thirty percent

Figure 2:
The frequency of oil and gas reservoirs plotted against porosity.

CLASSIFIED POROSITY
There are three main types of porosity (based
on Hydraulic properties):
+ Interconnected porosity has multiple pore
throat passages to connect neighboring pore.
+ Connected porosity has only one pore throat
passages connecting with another pore space.
+ Isolated porosity has no connection between
pore.
Interconnected and connected pore contribute
effective porosity because hydrocarbon can
move out from them.

Interconnected porosity

Connected porosity

Isolated porosity

CLASSIFIED POROSITY (cont.)

Porosity can be also classified into two major types
according to their origin:
Primary porosity
Intergranular, or interparticle porosity with
occurs between grains of sediment.
Intragranular, or intraparticle porosity which
actually occurs within the sediment grains
themselves.
Secondary porosity
Fenestral
Intercrystalline
Solution (moldic and vuggy)
Fracture

Moldic porosity

Primary Porosity
Primary porosity is divisible into two types:
intergranular or interparticle porosity,
which occurs between the grains of a
sediment ( Figure 1) and intragranular or
intraparticle porosity,

Intergranular porosity

Intragranular porosity

Secondary Porosity
Secondary porosity is porosity formed within
a reservoir after deposition. The major types
of secondary porosity are:
Fenestral;
Intercrystalline;
Solution (moldic and vuggy);
Fracture.

Fenestral porosity is developed where there is a

gap in the rock framework larger than the normal
grain-supported pore spaces.
Fenestral porosity is characteristic of lagoonal
pelmicrites in which dehydration has caused
shrinkage and buckling of the laminae. This type of
porosity is less frequently encountered.

Fenestral porosity

Crystalline dolomite reservoir: Reservoirs are

usually composed of secondary dolomite formed
by "dolomitization", the process whereby a preexisting calcium carbonate deposit is replaced
by dolomite.

Figure 1: A sketch of a thin section of a crystalline dolomite

Several types of secondary porosity can be

caused by solution.

Fracture porosity
Fractured reservoirs can occur in any brittle rock
that breaks by fracturing rather than by plastic
deformation. Thus, there are fractured reservoirs
in shales, hard-cemented quartzitic sandstones,
limestones, dolomites and, of course, basement
rocks such as granites and metamorphics.

In Figure 3, fractures may develop

from

tectonic forces associated with folding and

faulting.

Figure 3

 They may also develop from overburden

unloading and weathering immediately
under unconformities. Shrinkage from
cooling of igneous rocks and dehydrating
of shales also causes fracturing.
Fractures are generally vertical to
subvertical with widths varying from paper
thin to about 6 mm

STUDY FOR BASEMENT POROSITY

Basement construction simulation.
Determining values:
Vuggy (range, dimension)
Fracture (range, dimension)
Determine collection capacity.

RANGE OF POROSITY VALUES

QUALITATIVE EVALUATION
OF (CLASTIC) RESERVOIRS

(percent)

Qualitative evaluation

05

Negligible

5 10

poor

10 15

fair

15 20

good

> 20

very good

PERMEABILITY
Permeability is the property of a medium of
allowing fluids to pass through it without
change in the structure of the medium or
displacement of its parts.
Permeability is related to porosity but not
always dependent upon its.
It is controlled by the size of the connecting
passages (pore throats or capillaries) between
pores.
It is measured in darcies or millidarcies.

Q In

Q Out

Figure 4: experiment to determine permeability

k * ( P1 P 2) * A
Q
*L
Where:
Q: Flow rate

K: Permeability
(P1-P2): Pressure drop across
A: Cross-section area of sample
: Viscosity of fluid
L: Length of the sample
Due to flow rate depends on the Ratio of K to , so in
term of commercial rates: Gas ????

 Most reservoirs, however, only have

permeabilities recorded in the range of the
millidarcy (0.001 Darcy).
Reservoir permeabilities typically range
between 5 500 millidarcies, although
some reservoirs may have permeabilities
exceeding 5 Darcies.
Gas, which is less viscous than crude oil,
may be able to flow from tight sands or
dense limestones having permeabilities of
only a few millidarcies or less.

CLASSIFIED PERMEABILITY
Absolute permeability is a measure of the
ease (permeability) in which a single fluid can
flow through the pores of the rock when it is
100% saturated with that fluid.
Effective permeability refer to the presence
of two fluids in a rock, and is the ability of the
rock to transmit a fluid in the presence of
another fluid when the two fluids are
immiscible .
Relative permeability is ratio of Effective
permeability & Absolute permeability.

RANGE OF PERMEABILITY VALUES

QUALITATIVE EVALUATION OF
RESERVOIRS
K values (mD)

1.0 15
15 50
50 100
100 1000
> 1000

Qualitative evaluation Reservoir

Poor to fair
Moderate
Good
Very good
Excellent

PRIMARY FACTORS
CONTROLLING POROSITY &
PERMEABILITY

GRAIN SIZE

THE SHAPES OF THE GRAIN

GRAIN SORTING

ROCK FABRIC

EFFECTS OF COMPOSITION DURING OR

AFTER DEPOSITION

Grain Size
Porosity is independent of grain size.
Permeability, however, is very different. All
other things being equal, finer grain sizes of
sediment mean lower permeabilities. This is
because the finer the grain size, the
narrower the throat passages between pore
spaces and, therefore, the harder it is for
fluids to move through a rock. Therefore,
permeability declines with decreasing grain
size.

Figure 5: A sketch of a poorly-sorted sand and a

well-sorted sand.

Grain Sorting

Figure 6:
The effect of sorting on porosity and permeability:
the better sorted the sand, the higher are both the
porosity and permeability.

Rock Fabric

Figure 7: A sketch of a typical bedded sandstone consisting of

quartz grains elongated parallel to current direction and mica
flakes and other particles aligned parallel to the bedding.

EFFECT DIAGENESIS
ON SANDSTONE RESERVOIR

SANDSTONE BURIAL
In general, sandstone lose porosity with burial
at various rates according to several factors:
The chemical composition of a sand is one
of controlling factors on its overall rates of
porosity loss.
The geothermal gradient: the higher the
geothermal gradient, the greater the rate of
porosity reduction with depth.
Overpressure can help to preserve porosity
at great depth.

Preservation of porosities below the

Top of the Super-Normal Pressure zone.

SANDSTONE CEMENTATION

A sketch of a thin section of a sandstone reservoir

rock from the Brent field in the North Sea.
Many sandstone reservoirs have lost some of their
porosity by secondary silica cementation of this
type.

SANDSTONE CEMENTATION
Many other types of
cement are found in
sandstone reservoirs,
especially calcite and the
clay minerals.
Figure 09 is a sketch of a
thin section of a sandstone
showing porosity having
been totally destroyed by a
cement of large calcite
crystals.

A third important type of cement in sandstone reservoirs is provided

by the authigenic clay minerals. There are several types of clay.
Two particularly important ones are kaolin and illite.

Figure 10 is a sketch of a
sandstone with interstitial
kaolin crystals.
These generally occur with
a chunky euhedral habit. As
you can see, these kaolin
crystals occupy pore space,
but they do not significantly
affect the permeability of
the rock

Figure 11 is a sketch of a
sandstone with illite in the pore
spaces.
Authigenic
illite
generally
occurs as long thin angular
crystals which radiate from the
quartz grains on which they
grow.
Thus, a small amount of illite
may affect the permeability to a
very large extent by bridging
over and blocking the throat
passages between the pores.

 Figure 12: a graph on which porosity is plotted

against permeability on a logarithmic scale,
showing the porosity: permeability distributions for
illite-cemented sands and kaolin-cemented sands
from some North Sea gas fields.
It should be noted that the porosity is mostly
between 5 to 25 percent, irrespective of the type of
clay, but the permeabilities for kaolin-cemented
sands are far higher than the permeabilities of the
illite-cemented sands.

Figure 12

Sandstone Secondary Porosity

Secondary porosity generally involves the
leaching of carbonate cements and grains,
including calcite, dolomite, siderite and
shell debris. It also involves the leaching of
unstable detrital minerals, particularly
feldspar. In this latter case, leached
porosity is generally associated with kaolin
cementation, both replacing feldspar and
occurring as an authigenic cement in its
own right.

Summary: Diagenetic Pathways

20-30

Figure 13

Carbonat Rock Types

 Carbonate reservoirs are usually cemented quite

early, and most lose their primary porosity.
Carbonates in petroleum reservoirs usually
exhibit secondary porosity.
This may be due to solution processes, to
fracturing, or to intercrystalline pore
development. Intercrystalline porosity is
particularly important in many dolomite
reservoirs, where coarse crystalline dolomite
has replaced limestone.
A volume reduction of up to 13% accompanies
this reaction and may help to create the
secondary voids.

 Secondary porosities in both limestones

and sandstones are often developed by
leaching along fault zones and
unconformity surfaces.
In such cases, these zones may become
important conduits for secondary migration
of hydrocarbons.

EFFECT DIAGENESIS
ON CARBONATE RESERVOIR

Limestones

Figure 14: the

various routes that
may be taken by a
skeletal lime sand
as it is buried and
undergoes
diagenesis.

Two types of
secondary solution
pores: moldic and
vuggy, as shown in
the previous
diagram

Dolomites
A secondary dolomite,
showing that the
intercrystalline pores
are large and often
interconnected.

Atypical Reservoirs Rocks

About >90 percent of the world's discovered
petroleum occurs in sandstone and carbonate
reservoirs.
The remaining reserves occur in what can best
be described as atypical reservoirs. Almost any
rock can serve as a reservoir, providing that it
has the two properties of porosity and
permeability.
Atypical reservoirs include shales, granites and
other igneous and metamorphic rocks.
Generally, porosity that occurs in these is due to
fracturing.

 A small fraction of world oil reserves has

been found in lithologies such as shale or
igneous and metamorphic basement
rocks. In these rocks, as in many tight,
brittle sandstones and carbonates, the oil
resides within fracture porosity. Such
reservoirs can be quite productive;
The Augila field of Libya, Bach Ho oil
field of Viet nam, the fractured Monterey
chert reservoirs of California are prominent
examples.

The Augila field of Libya

This field consists of an old basement high of weathered granite
with onlapping sands and reefal carbonates.
Production comes from the carbonates and sands, as well as
the granite.
One well, the #1 well on the cross-section, penetrated through
the cap rock of the field into granite without penetrating either
reefal or sand reservoir. This well flowed at over 40,000 barrels
of oil per day from the granite.
The porosity was a mixture of fracturing and solution, where
chemically-unstable feldspar grains were leached out to leave a
granite wash largely made up of residual quartz grains.

An atypical reservoir, a cross-section through the Augila

field of Libya (Williams, 1972).

Figure 15

The Bach Ho field of Viet Nam

Fig 16: Schema of weathered activities when the

structure is uplifted to the surface

Fig 17:
Paleotecto
nic sections
along
White
TigerNorthern
Eastern
Dragon
structures

Fig 18: Geological longitudinal section along White

Tiger-Northern Eastern Dragon structures

Reservoir Continuity
Most oil fields do not occur in single sheetshaped reservoirs of great lateral continuity with
uniform porosity and permeability distributions.
Most oil accumulations occur in
heterogeneous reservoirs with permeability
barriers because of shale breaks or local
cemented zones.

Figure 22 is the reservoir engineer's dream: a blanket sand of

uniform porosity and permeability distribution. This occurs with
a single oil- water contact. In this case for a well drilled at
location 1 or through the reservoir of any other location, gross
pay equals net pay.

Figure 23 is somewhat different: the sand is shaling out from

right to left across the section, thus for a well drilled at location
2 the net pay of the reservoir is less than the gross pay. There
is still one oil accumulation, or at least one major one, but
there is a small separate accumulation with its own oil: water
contact in the lower left-hand part of the figure..

Figure 24 shows another situation. There is a series of

separate oil pools with their own oil: water contacts. This is
not a genuine anticlinal structural trap, but a series of
stratigraphic traps which pinch out towards the crest of the
structure. For each reservoir, net pay equals gross pay.

Cross-Sectional Continuity
Reservoir continuity in cross-section is an important consideration in
determining reservoir quality (Harris and Hewitt, 1977). Figure 27 ,

Figure 27

Figure 28 a: a series of channels has coalesced. Oil

entrapment in this case would be stratigraphic
and Figure 28b: oil entrapment can only be stratigraphic.

Fig 28: Different degrees of vertical continuity.

If the sand body with lateral continuity, shown in Figure 28a , were
deformed structurally, oil entrapment would become structural rather
than stratigraphic

Figure 29

Case History: Intisar Field, Libya

Figure 30 is an isopach map of one of the Intisar

(formerly Idris) reef fields located in the Sirte basin
of Libya.
This field is a stratigraphic trap contained within a
reef or carbonate buildup. In the map, notice the
simple sub circular geometry of the reservoir. The
thickness of the reservoir increases from zero to
about 1,200 feet in an approximate distance of
only 2.5 miles.

Figure 30

Figure 31: geological cross-section showing the various

lithological facies of the reef. .

Figure 32: Petrophysical cross-section showing the

distribution of zones of different porosity.

RESERVOIR ENERGY SOURCE

Gas dissolved in oil.
Free gas under pressure.
Gas reservoir.
Oil reservoir wet/free gas cap.
Fluid pressure.
Hydrostatic hydrodynamic.
Compressed water, gas, oil.
Elastically compressed rock.
Gravity
Combination of the above.

The fundamental forces that drive,

stabilise, or limit fluid movement are:
Gravity (e.g. causing separation of gas, oil and
water in the reservoir column)
Capillary (e.g. responsible for the retention of
water in micro-porosity)
Molecular diffusion (e.g. small scale flow acting
to homogenise fluid compositions within a given
phase)
Thermal convection (convective movement of all
mobile fluids, especially gases)
Fluid pressure gradients (the major force
operating during primary production)

RESERVOIR DRIVE
Reservoir drive is the natural energy in a
reservoir that forces the fluids out of the rock
and into the well.
Every oil field has at least one reservoir
drive.
Type of reservoir drives in oil field include:

RESERVOIR DRIVE (Cont.)

Former:
Solution gas drive.
Gas cap drive.
Water drive.
Gravity Drainage.
Combination drive.

Now:
1. Fluid Extension drive
2. Gas-cap drive
3. Water drive
4. Compaction drive
5. Combination drive

Exercise 2
1. The main petrophysical properties of reservoir
2. The factors effect to those properties
3. The methods to determine the petrophysical
properties
4. Role and meaning of petrophysical properties

Exercise 3