Abstract
The presented reservoir in this paper is a tight carbonate reservoir with vertical and horizontal heterogeneous properties. In particular, the low clay content in this reservoir gives low gamma ray counts, making difficult the layer identification. In addition, the high-resistivity response of hydrocarbon-bearing pay-zones and of the tight layers make more difficult the identification of the reservoir sweet spots. Slim-hole magnetic resonance (MR) logging was deployed in wash-down mode for identifying reservoir sweet-spots for providing lithology-independent porosity and formation fluid characterization.
The well placement over a deep elongated anticline with steep dips and the lowering of the production liner are challenging. Consequently, the field is being developed using horizontal wells that cut across multiple reservoir layers to maximize reservoir contact and drainage.
MR was acquired with dual wait time enabled T2 polarization to differentiate between moveable water and hydrocarbons. After acquisition, the standard deliverables are partial porosities and permeability index. The porosity is divided into clay-bound water (CBW), bulk-volume irreducible (BVI) and bulk-volume moveable (BVM). The effective porosity, the permeability index and the permeability-effective porosity ratio were used to evaluate the rock quality. The classification was based on the gradient of the permeability-effective porosity ratio, where a steeper gradient is interpreted as high flow zone, a gentle gradient as low flow zone and a flat gradient is considered as tight baffle zone.
Based on the MR flow units and fluid types (CBW, BVI and BVM), the drilled interval was classified into six compartments of high flow, one compartment of low flow and five tight baffle zones. Accordingly, the perforation plan was optimized to fit the high flow units only. Comparing to the conventional log analysis, MR excluded approximately 700 ft of non-productive reservoirs, leading to more than 250,000 USD cost savings in perforation, drilling time and production optimization.
The well was drilled with a distance-to-bed boundary tool; however, enormous potential exists to use this slim MR tool as a non-radioactive sourceless solution for geosteering through reservoir sweet spots while delivering wells that are more productive safely.
