A new method to construct reservoir capillary pressure curves using NMR log data and its application

Abstract

By analyzing hundreds of capillary pressure curves, the controlling factors of shape and type of capillary pressure curves are found and a novel method is presented to construct capillary pressure curves by using reservoir permeability and a synthesized index. The accuracy of this new method is verifi ed by mercury-injection experiments. Considering the limited quantity of capillary pressure data, a new method is developed to extract the Swanson parameter from the NMR T2 distribution and estimate reservoir permeability. Integrating with NMR total porosity, reservoir capillary pressure curves can be constructed to evaluate reservoir pore structure in the intervals with NMR log data. An in-situ example of evaluating reservoir pore structure using the capillary pressure curves by this new method is presented. The result shows that it accurately detects the change in reservoir pore structure as a function of depth.