Abstract: Can Geostatistical Methods be Used to Infer Long-Range Oil
Migration
Through Carrier Beds? A Case Study from the Alberta
Basin, Canada
BEKELE, ELISE B., Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota, 310 Pillsbury Drive, S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455
Abstract
Secondary oil migration
through carrier beds plays an important
role in the formation of many oil fields. The purpose of this study
is to compare present-day locations of major oil fields with
numerical simulations of secondary oil
migration
that incorporate
geostatistical models of carrier bed heterogeneity. Geostatistical
models of permeability have seen widespread application in
petroleum reservoir studies, but there are virtually no field-based
studies of long-range oil
migration
that consider the impact of
carrier bed heterogeneity. In this study, geostatistical models of
permeability were developed using an exceptional data base of rock
core analyses from the Viking Formation in the Alberta Basin The
Viking is a heterogeneous sandstone carrier bed in which buoyancy
and basin hydrodynamics probably impelled oil several hundreds of
kilometers away from the mature source area. Spatial correlation
patterns of permeability were obtained using directional
variograms. Several kriged permeability maps were constructed using
a variety of assumptions regarding data selection criteria.
Secondary oil
migration
was simulated with a quasi
three-dimensional model that tracks mathematical particles from the
oil source area to the reservoirs. The permeability models produced
different directions and distances of simulated oil
migration
pathways, but none compared favorably with the observed
distribution of oil fields in the Viking. The discrepancy between
the model and observed suggests that rock core permeameter data may
be a poor predictor of paleo-permeability.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90937©1998 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah