Determining petrophysical properties of low-resistivity reservoir using nuclear magnetic resonance logs

Abstract EN

The combination of conventional logs such as density, neutron, and resistivity logs has 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 reservoir logs 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 is 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 been available only as a supplement tool, to provide additional information on the producibility of the reservoir.

The main limitation of NMR, however, has 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 helps to accurately determine the reservoir rock petrophysical properties.

In the analysis of NMR data, several aspects of NMR technique have been used: (1) T11T2 ratio for fluid identification; (2) the difference between NMR derived porosity and total porosity to determine the types of clay minerals; and (3) NMR relaxation properties to identify fluids’ nature and rock properties.

This paper presents four examples of low resistivity reservoirs.

Analysis of NMR data of low resistivity reservoirs has helped to identify the producibility of these zones, to determine lithology-independent porosity and to distinguish between bound and free water.

For the case of a 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 nature of the two formations and then the height of the oil column.

This was based mainly on the high contrast of NMR relaxation parameters.