Digital reservoir properties from cuttings: Case studies from tight gas sand and carbonate rocks. 9th Middle East Geosciences Conference, GEO 2010.

Experimental quantification of rock properties requires regular-shaped intact fragments of rock. These fragments (plugs) are cut from cores extracted from wells. Coring is generally expensive and arguably impossible where new drilling technologies (e.g., coiled tubing) are employed. One application of Ingrain’s technology was to quantify carbonate reservoir properties from drill cuttings that were collected from a deep deviated well. Naturally, the configuration of the well prevented the operator from extracting core material. As a result, digital rock physics lab was the only option to understand this reservoir and design production strategy. A large number of these cuttings were imaged, segmented, and digitally tested at Ingrain. The resulting porosity, permeability, and elastic-wave velocity were consistent with the operator’s expectation based on the well’s performance. The latest-generation CT (computed tomography) scanners are used to capture in 3-D the actual fabric of reservoir rock samples - the pore-space and mineral matrix geometry and fabric - at resolutions as high as 100 nanometers. These physical measurements which require weeks or months in a physical lab can now be completed in a matter of days, on a massive scale and on any rock material, including sidewall plugs and drill cuttings. With the rapid advances in digital rock physics technology, we also envision that complicated natural pore-scale processes (fine particle migration, formation damage, diagenesis, and chemical reactions) will be virtually simulated in the near future.