Carbonate Petroleum Reservoirs

The case history approach has an impressive record of success in a variety of disciplines. Collections of case histories, casebooks, are now widely used in all sorts of specialties other than in their familiar application to law and medicine. The case method had its formal beginning at Harvard in 1871 when Christopher Lagdell developed it as a means of teaching. It was so successful in teaching law that it was soon adopted in medical education, and the col lection of cases provided the raw material for research on various diseases. Subsequently, the case history approach spread to such varied fields as busi ness, psychology, management, and economics, and there are over 100 books in print that use this approach. The idea for a series of Casebooks in Earth Sciences grew from my ex perience in organizing and editing a collection of examples of one variety of sedimentary deposits. The project began as an effort to bring some order to a large number of descriptions of these deposits that were so varied in pre sentation and terminology that even specialists found them difficult to compare and analyze. Thus, from the beginning, it was evident that something more than a simple collection of papers was needed. Accordingly, the nearly fifty contributors worked together with George de Vries Klein and me to establish a standard format for presenting the case histories.

An accessible resource, covering the fundamentals of carbonate reservoir engineering Includes discussions on how, where and why carbonate are formed, plus reviews of basic sedimentological and stratigraphic principles to explain carbonate platform characteristics and stratigraphic relationships Offers a new, genetic classification of carbonate porosity that is especially useful in predicting spatial distribution of pore networks.

Reservoir quality is studied using a wide range of similar techniques in both sandstones and carbonates. Sandstone and carbonate reservoir quality both benefit from the study of modern analogues and experiments, but modelling approaches are currently quite different for these two types of reservoirs. There are many common controls on sandstone and carbonate reservoir quality, but also distinct differences due primarily to mineralogy. Numerous controversies remain including the question of oil inhibition, the key control on pressure solution and geochemical flux of material to or from reservoirs. This collection of papers contains case-study-based examples of sandstone and carbonate reservoir quality prediction as well as modern analogue, outcrop analogue, modelling and advanced analytical approaches.

F. Jerry Lucia, working in America’s main oil-rich state, has produced a work that goes after one of the holy grails of oil prospecting. One main target in petroleum recovery is the description of the three-dimensional distribution of petrophysical properties on the interwell scale in carbonate reservoirs. Doing so would improve performance predictions by means of fluid-flow computer simulations. Lucia’s book focuses on the improvement of geological, petrophysical, and geostatistical methods, describes the basic petrophysical properties, important geology parameters, and rock fabrics from cores, and discusses their spatial distribution. A closing chapter deals with reservoir models as an input into flow simulators.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the parameters and factors that cause heterogeneity in carbonate reservoirs, and examines how they interact with one another. It explores the various scales of heterogeneity, how they are caused, and how they can be minimized, as well as how the scales affect each other, providing practical examples in each chapter. The book concludes by discussing the effect of heterogeneity on petrophysical evaluations. As reducing heterogeneity is the only way to obtain accurate carbonate reservoir characteristics at the regional scale, the book offers an important reference guide for all geologists, engineers, and modelers working with subsurface data.

This second volume on carbonate reservoirs completes the two-volume treatise on this important topic for petroleum engineers and geologists. Together, the volumes form a complete, modern reference to the properties and production behaviour of carbonate petroleum reservoirs. The book contains valuable glossaries to geologic and petroleum engineering terms providing exact definitions for writers and speakers. Lecturers will find a useful appendix devoted to questions and problems that can be used for teaching assignments as well as a guide for lecture development. In addition, there is a chapter devoted to core analysis of carbonate rocks which is ideal for laboratory instruction. Managers and production engineers will find a review of the latest laboratory technology for carbonate formation evaluation in the chapter on core analysis. The modern classification of carbonate rocks is presented with petroleum production performance and overall characterization using seismic and well test analyses. Separate chapters are devoted to the important naturally fractured and chalk reservoirs. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on formation evaluation and performance. This two-volume work brings together the wide variety of approaches to the study of carbonate reservoirs and will therefore be of value to managers, engineers, geologists and lecturers.

Most of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels, and there are still many strides being made in the efficiency and cost effectiveness of extracting these important and increasingly more elusive natural resources. This is only possible if the nature of the emergence, evolution, and parameter estimation of high grade reservoir rocks at great depths is known and a theory of their forecast is developed. Over 60 percent of world oil production is currently associated with carbonate reservoir rocks. The exploration, appraisal and development of these fields are significantly complicated by a number of factors. These factors include the structural complexity of the carbonate complexes, variability of the reservoir rock types and properties within a particular deposit, many unknowns in the evaluation of fracturing and its spatial variability, and the preservation of the reservoir rock qualities with depth. The main objective of most studies is discovering patterns in the reservoir rock property changes of carbonate deposits of different genesis, composition and age. A short list of the unsolved issues includes: the role of facies environment in the carbonate formation; the major geologic factors affecting the formation of high-capacity reservoir rocks and preservation of their properties; recommendations as to the use of the new techniques in studies of the structural parameters; and establishing a correlation between the major evaluation parameters. The focus of this volume is to show the scientific and engineering community a revolutionary process. The author perfected an earlier developed methodology in studies of the void space structure (Bagrintseva’s method, 1982). This methodology is based on carbonate rock saturation with luminophore and on special techniques in processing of photographs made under UV light. The luminophore technique was combined with the raster electron microscopy and its variation, the studies under the cathode luminescence regime. This combination enabled a more detailed study of the reservoir void space, the nonuniformity in the open fracture evolution, their morphology, length and variability of openness. Over recent years these techniques have found wide application. Useful for the veteran engineer or scientist and the student alike, this book is a must-have for any geologist, engineer, or student working in the field of upstream petroleum engineering.

The 2nd Edition of Carbonate Reservoirs aims to educate graduate students and industry professionals on the complexities of porosity evolution in carbonate reservoirs. In the intervening 12 years since the first edition, there have been numerous studies of value published that need to be recognized and incorporated in the topics discussed. A chapter on the impact of global tectonics and biological evolution on the carbonate system has been added to emphasize the effects of global earth processes and the changing nature of life on earth through Phanerozoic time on all aspects of the carbonate system. The centerpiece of this chapter—and easily the most important synthesis of carbonate concepts developed since the 2001 edition—is the discussion of the CATT hypothesis, an integrated global database bringing together stratigraphy, tectonics, global climate, oceanic geochemistry, carbonate platform characteristics, and biologic evolution in a common time framework. Another new chapter concerns naturally fractured carbonates, a subject of increasing importance, given recent technological developments in 3D seismic, reservoir modeling, and reservoir production techniques. Detailed porosity classifications schemes for easy comparison Overview of the carbonate sedimentologic system Case studies to blend theory and practice