Implementation of
Globally Applicable Standard Workflow for the Borehole
Image Interpretation in Clastic and Carbonate Reservoirs
Chitale, D. V. (Vivek),
Halliburton Energy Services,
A new standard workflow to perform integrated interpretation of
borehole
images and the other openhole logs was
recently proposed (Chitale and Sullivan, 2004).
Integration of the bulk petrophysical measurements
with the image logs that provide description of the layering, texture, and
geometry of the subsurface rocks offers an extremely powerful reservoir
characterization tool available to an E&P asset team. The objective of
standardizing the image interpretation workflow is to increase their
utilization in solving E&P problems by showing that they are more than
pretty pictures.
This paper demonstrates the implementation of the new image
interpretation workflow in the case of clastic- and
carbonate reservoirs from Borehole
images
are first integrated with conventional openhole logs
to identify reservoir lithofacies, depositional facies, and high frequency stratigraphic
changes. Sedimentary cycles and bed-sets and packages are then interpreted and
electro-facies ordering is produced that further
leads to sequence stratigraphic analysis. Standard
technique includes net-to-gross pay estimation.
The recommended
workflow implementation assumes geologists, petrophysicists
and reservoir engineers from an asset team working together to maximize the
E&P value. Benefits to the oil and gas operators include (1) enhanced accuracy
in reserves estimation and reservoir modeling; (2) increased communication
within asset teams and (3) optimum utilization of the acquired down-hole data.
All of the above directly save the E&P costs.