Characterization of heterogeneities in Carbonates

Abstract

Summary Heterogeneity in carbonate rock is the principal reason for its improper characterization and this becomes more apparent as attempts are made to characterize petrophysical properties at various scales. Dissolution, precipitation, and cementation effects commonly found in carbonates can change the basic framework and strength of carbonate rocks making them more heterogeneous and thereby affecting seismic properties. These properties are important to understand should be accounted for obtaining elastic properties of these carbonate rocks. Similar to velocity, permeability is a complex measure of the heterogeneities and anisotropy present in the rock. Some of the available forward rock-physics models do consider the anisotropy but all models lack to account for the heterogeneity in the rocks. We examine here various laboratory methods to understand and map carbonate rocks. We believe that a correlation among these features will help in characterizing the nature of heterogeneity in the rock and will provide a control on reliable analysis of the results/output values.