Petrophysical evaluation of low-resistivity sandstone reservoirs with nuclear magnetic resonance log

Abstract

The combination of conventional logs, such as density, neutron and resistivity logs, is proven to be very effective in the evaluation of normal reservoirs. For low-resistivity reservoirs, however, an accurate determination of the petrophysical parameters with the conventional log reservoirs is very difficult. This paper presents two cases of low-resistivity reservoirs and low-contrast resistivity reservoirs, where conventional logs fail to determine the petrophysical properties of reservoirs, mainly, low-resistivity and low-contrast resistivity reservoirs. The problems of these reservoirs are that conventional logging interpretation shows high water saturation zones, but water-free hydrocarbon would be produced. In the case of low-resistivity contrast reservoirs, it is very hard to determine water hydrocarbon contact with resistivity logs. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has only been available as a supplementary tool to provide additional information on the producibility of the reservoir. The main limitations of NMR have been the cost and time of acquiring data. This paper shows that in the case of low-resistivity reservoirs, NMR is a very cost-effective tool and is of help in accurately determining the reservoir rock petrophysical properties. In the analysis of NMR data, several aspects of NMR technique have been used: (1) T1/T2 ratio for fluid identification, (2) the difference between NMR-derived porosity and total porosity to determine the types of clay minerals, (3) NMR relaxation properties to identify fluids composition and rock properties. This paper presents four examples of low-resistivity reservoirs. Analysis of the NMR data of low-resistivity reservoirs has helped identify the producibility of these zones, determine lithology-independent porosity and distinguish between bound and free water. For the case of low-contrast resistivity reservoir, where there was little resistivity contrast between water-bearing formation and oil-bearing formation, NMR has been able to identify the fluid composition of the two formations, as well as the height of the oil column. This was based mainly on the high contrast of NMR relaxation parameters.