The Impact of Clay Minerals on the Porosity Distribution of Clastic Reservoirs: A Case Study from the Labuan Island, Malaysia

Abstract

Clay mineral content and diagenetic processes are vital factors that affect reservoir quality, especially in tight clastic reservoirs, which are crucial for industrial and scientific purposes. The presence of clay minerals poses one of the most significant challenges in evaluating sandstone reservoirs’ quality. Even though wireline logs may provide a good indication of the reservoir quality, there have been cases where they have failed. This work focuses on the clay minerals’ impact on the porosity and permeability of a clastic reservoir. Typical outcrops from Labuan Island, Brunei–Sabah Basin, were chosen as a case study to investigate the petrophysical and petrographic parameters together with clay mineralogy profiling. The effects of the clays on the petrophysical parameters of the sandstone reservoir were evaluated through air permeability, spectral gamma ray measurements, a petrographic thin section analysis, a visual porosity estimation, and a grain size analysis. Field and petrographic studies revealed that Belait and Temburong formations contain massive, interbedded, laminated, and cross-bedded sandstones. Using an image analysis of the thin sections, porosity values ranged from 7.3% to 23.5%, with different macro and micro porosity distributions. According to the spectral gamma-ray investigation and air permeability, permeability reduction is strongly associated with clay minerals. The microporosity and permeability of the analyzed samples showed a unique pattern influenced by the grain size distribution. It was found that the textures dominated by mud grain size had a more significant impact on the air permeability and visual porosity, with coefficient of determination values of 0.83 and 0.70, respectively. The Belait Formation displayed a higher porosity and permeability compared to the Temburong Formation. This research provides new insight into the potential reservoir of Stage IV (the Belait Formation offshore equivalent) compared to Stage II (the Temburong Formation offshore equivalent).