Petrophysical evaluation of a carbonate reservoir in Campos Basin - southeastern Brazil

Abel Carrasquilla* (UENF - LENEP) & Nelson Pereira Franco Filho (PETROBRAS - UOBC)
Summary
In this work, we analyzed geological, geophysical, and
petrophysical data sets for two wells to assess the carbonate
reservoir of Field A in Campos Basin - southeastern Brazil.
Geological data refer to interpretation of cores samples,
geophysical data to well logs, and petrophysical data to
laboratory tests of capillary pressure by mercury injection,
retort, membrane, and centrifugal saturations. The purpose
of this study is to test our hypothesis that it is possible to
achieve a more accurate profile of the distribution of the
properties of reservoirs through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of integrated data sets. Thus, a qualitative
interpretation was made by the joint plot of the data, with
results showing a good agreement between the different
data types for the two wells. Then, a quantitative interpretation was made by first calculating the quality of the reservoir in accord with the proposal of Amaefule et al. (1993),
and, subsequently, inverting the water saturation, which
showed a good concordance when compared with different
types of saturations of well A3. The inverted Archie parameters of well A3 showed an excellent fit when applied
to calculate well A10 saturation. Results show that the
adopted interpretive approach improves the petrophysical
evaluation, indicating it can be extended to the other 25
existing wells in this field.
Introduction
Our petrophysical study was conducted in a carbonate reservoir in Field A of Campos Basin, which is located along
the continental shelf of Rio de Janeiro State (Figure 1),
southeastern Brazil (Rangel et al., 1994). The basin covers
an area of approximately 100.000 km2 (Milani et al., 2000),
corresponds to the main oil province of Brazil, comprising
approximately 80% of the country's oil reserves (Bruhn,
1998).
The origin and evolution of Campos Basin is associated
with disruption of Gondwana and subsequent opening of
the South Atlantic. Hydrocarbon reservoirs occur throughout almost the entire stratigraphic column of this basin,
being that the main sequences comprise fractured basalts,
coquinas, turbidites, and carbonate rocks (Figure 2). The
reservoirs of interest in this work were formed during the
Albian, when marine conditions prevailed in giving rise to
a carbonate platform of restricted marine basin phase,
yielding the Macae Group. This group comprises carbonate
ramp deposits, comprising rocks of various textures such as
porous grainstones and packstones, and mudstones of outer
platform (Souza Cruz, 1995).

Among the many physical parameters of an oil and gas

reservoir, porosity and permeability are the main factors
that determine its storage capacity. However, a very heterogeneous porosity usually occurs within carbonate reservoirs at various scales, from large vugs to small
interparticles, making complex the construction of geological models (Hartmann & Beaumont, 1999). These porosity
distributions become more intricate even when dissolution
and diagenesis processes create secondary porosity. However, high porosity of carbonates allows high capacity hydrocarbon accumulations in these types of reservoirs, which
results in high oil production around the world. There is
therefore great interest in studying carbonate reservoirs
(Lucia, 1999).
In this sense, interpretation of well logs and assessment of
core rock samples in the laboratory are the widely used
methods to analyze the physical properties of geological
formations and to characterize relationship between porosity and permeability in carbonate reservoirs (Aguilera &
Aguilera, 2001). The data resolution and spatial coverage
of these two methodologies, combined with the amount of
measured parameters, occur at different scales toward obtaining knowledge of lithology and structural information
in subsurface (Shenawi et al., 2007). Thus, our study explores the virtues of these two techniques, even adding the
geological interpretation, to evaluate from a petrophysical
point of view, data sets from a carbonate reservoir in Campos Basin.
Methodology
To perform our study, we used data from two wells of a
carbonate reservoir in Campos Basin. The field has 27
drilled wells, but only wells A3 and A10 have a more complete data set, including laboratory petrophysical data (retort, centrifuge and membrane saturations, capillary pressure by mercury injection, porosity, permeability, etc.),
geological interpretation (lithofacies, stratigraphy, etc.),
and measured well logs (gamma ray, resistivity, neutron
porosity, density, and sonic). Of these two studied wells,
well A3 was considered as a reference and well A10 as a
blind test of the methodology proposed in this study.
Initially, we plot the available data, both laboratory and
well log data to observe the main features. Next, we combine these results with the available geological data for a
more reliable and accurate qualitative interpretation.

Petrophysical evaluation of carbonate reservoir - Carrasquilla & Franco Filho

After that, we begin the quantitative interpretation using

equations proposed by Amaefule et al. (1993), who developed a technique based on the Kozeny - Carman equation
to identify the reservoir quality index (RQI), as follows:

RQI 0.0314 K ,

(1)

where K is the permeability (md) and is the porosity (%).

Finally, to analyze the water saturation of the reservoir, we
did an inversion of the data using Tikhonov regularization
(1963):

x ( AT A I ) 1 AT y ,

(2)

where x is a parameter vector of dimension p, y is a vector

of observations of size n, A is an n p matrix, which is
known as sensitivity matrix (derived of observations regarding to parameters), is the parameter to stabilize the
system, I is the identity matrix, -1 is the inverse matrix, and
T means transposed matrix.
The equation used to perform saturation inversion was the
Archie (1942) equation in logarithm form:

log S w 1 nlog a log Rw log Rt m log ,

(3)

where SW is the water saturation (%), RW formation water

resistivity (ohm m), Rt is the measured formation resistivity
(ohm m), is the porosity (%), n is the exponent saturation,
a is the tortuosity constant, and m the exponent is the texture or cementation. The adjustment process by inversion
was initially applied to Well A3 with retort saturation data
and the results were compared with mercury injection,
membrane and centrifuge saturations, as well as the saturation calculated from well logs with Archie's equation.
Archie parameters resulting from this operation were then
applied to well A10 in the form of a blind test.
Results and discussions
For well A3, Figure 3 shows plots of porosity and permeability measured in laboratory, as well as the calculated
quality of the reservoir, in the first three tracks. The fourth
track, on the other hand, shows the SW calculated from well
logs using Archie's equation, and the fifth track, the facies
analysis from core samples, which indicates the type sedimentary environment where the rock was formed (high,
medium or low energy). In this figure, we observe the presence of the reservoir between depths of 20 to 80 m, where
the porosity is not very high (around 20%), permeability is
greater than 200 md, oil saturation is about 70%, and good

reservoir quality (over 0.05 m). Facies show us that this

part of the well coincides with the highest values of tidal
energy in the reservoir, with colors ranging from red (high)
to blue (medium) to cyan (average).
Also for well A3, Figure 4 shows, on the left, values of the
mercury injection capillary pressure (PC) plotted against
mercury saturation (SHg) for different depths. It is noted in
this figure that as the well deepens, the curves have a faster
decay, which shows the presence of less oil and more water. Same figure shows, on the right, the same data, but
plotted in histogram form for the same depths. These figures show the increase in microporosity with depth into the
water zone, with values less than 1 mm, which are associated with diagenetic processes and shown with highest frequencies in the bar chart.
For well A10, neighboring well A3, Figure 5 shows the
same tracks as described in Figure 4. The first track shows
the reservoir in depths between 40 to 120 m, having higher
porosity (about 20%), permeability above 100 md, good
reservoir quality (0.05 m), and oil saturation up to 50%.
The fifth track shows that in this well the type of porosity
also changes with depth, appearing more macro with largest presence of red, blue, and cyan colors, indicating areas
of high energy.
Figure 6 also shows, for well A10, the same types of graphs
shown in Figure 4 for well A3. The first track shows the
same kind of trend with PC curving against SHg, or a more
rapid decline when passing from oil to water zone. In the
second track, unlike well A3, as we go deeper into the well,
meso porosity appears, up to 15 mm on the average pore
throat, reducing macro and micro pores. Comparing with
well A3, this indicates a better porosity of well A10 with
depth.
Finally, Figure 7 shows three tracks, with the first presenting the adjustment by inversion of the saturation of
Archies equation for retort saturation data, showing a
small fit error for well A3. This fit showed values for
Archies equation parameters of a = 1.0098, m = 2.1000, n
= 2.1000, and RW = 0.0437. The values a = 1 , m = n = 2
were defined by Archie for sandstones, while carbonates in
general, for having more complex geometry porous and
therefore more intricate connections, presenting values of m
2 and n 2. The studied carbonate reservoir has
grainstones with well behaved primary intergranular porosity, similar to sands. When we use the same parameters
to adjust the values of SW calculated by the Archies equation to SHg, for well A3, it shows the fit in the second track,
again with a good fit. We then use the same set of parameters for the SW Archie curve and SHg (track 3) for the well
A10, showing in the same way, an adjustment with little
error.

Petrophysical evaluation of carbonate reservoir - Carrasquilla & Franco Filho

Conclusions
In this work, we analyze geological interpretation, geophysical well logs, and petrophysical laboratory analyzes,
corresponding to two wells of the field in the Campos Basin in southeastern Brazil, which traverse a carbonate reservoir. The qualitative interpretation of the data showed
that the integration of them, by incorporating petrophysical,
geophysical, and geological data, helps to better understand
the distribution of the properties of reservoirs, in other
words, micro porosity increases with depth for well A3
while meso porosity increases in well A10. Despite similar
reservoir quality and permeability in both wells, oil saturation is higher in well A3, which has a reservoir formed in a
state of lower energy than well A10. On the other hand,
through quantitative interpretation were determined values
of Archies equation parameters (a = 1.0098, m = 2.1000, n
= 2.1000, and RW = 0.0437), which are typical values of
carbonates. Finally, the strategy of considering a well as
reference, one that has a more complete set of data, proved
to be right, because the parameters calculated in well A3
data set fitted very well the neighbor well A10, showing
that this methodology can be extended the rest of the field.

Figure 2. Main reservoirs of Campos Basin. Carbonate reservoirs above salt (evaporites)
are the reservoirs studied in this work (modified from Bruhn, 1998).

Acknowledgements
We thank Petrobras System of Science, Technology and
Training in Carbonates (SCTC) for financial resources to
develop a research project and the release of data sets, and
UENF - LENEP for its physical and computational infrastructure.

Figure 1. Campos Basin and its oilfields in orange (modified from

Bruhn, 1998).
Figure 3. Well A3 plots: porosity (track 1), permeability (track 2), water saturation (track
3), reservoir quality (track 4), and electrofacies (track 5).

Figure 4. On the left, graphs of capillary pressure by mercury injection vs.

fraction of 1 - SHg for well A3, for various depths (track 1). On the right,
graphs A to M are frequency diagrams for pore throat values determined by
mercury injection vs. mercury saturation plots for various depths.

Figure 5. Well A10: porosity (track 1), permeability (track 2) and water saturation
(track 3), reservoir quality (track 4) and electrofacies (track 5) plots.

Figure 6. Graph of capillary pressure by mercury injection versus fraction of 1 - SHg for Well
A10, for various depths (track 1). In the following graphs are frequency diagrams for pore throat
values determined by mercury injection vs mercury saturation for various depths.

Figure 7. For well A3, inversion of Archies equation parameters for retort saturation data (track 1), showing values of a = 1.0098, m = 2.1000, n =
2.1000, and RW = 0.0437. These parameters were used to fit the water and mercury saturation data for well A3 (track 2), and to fit the water and
mercury saturation data for well A10 (track 3).

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Petrophysical evaluation of a carbonate reservoir in Campos Basin - southeastern Brazil
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