Estimates of permeability and irreducible water saturation by means of a new robust computation of fractional power average relaxation times

Abstract

In a suite of water-saturated sandstones, we have recently demonstrated that irreducible water saturation can be well estimated using relaxation time only, in the form of any of several “averages” giving more emphasis to short times than does the geometric mean time. The best estimate of permeability came from fits giving more emphasis to slightly longer times. In this paper we present estimates of irreducible water saturation and permeability using approximations (here called Robusta approximation) to the fractional power average relaxation time 〈 T p 〉 1/ p . The advantage of this approximation is that it does not involve previous computation of exponential components; therefore, it does not depend on the choice of the inversion method, and it permits a very fast computation. The Robusta approximation gives some of the best correlations using p = −0.55 for irreducible water saturation and p = +0.18 for permeability.