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AAPG Bulletin

Abstract

AAPG Bulletin, V. 92, No. 2 (February 2008), P. 145-164.

Copyright copy2008. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.

DOI:10.1306/09280707062

A megascale view of reservoir quality in producing sandstones from the offshore Gulf of Mexico

S. N. Ehrenberg,1 P. H. Nadeau,2 O. Steen3

1StatoilHydro, N-4035 Stavanger, Norway; [email protected]
2StatoilHydro, N-4035 Stavanger, Norway; [email protected]
3StatoilHydro, N-4035 Stavanger, Norway; [email protected]

ABSTRACT

A publicly available data set has been examined for relationships between average values of Previous HitporosityNext Hit, permeability, Previous HitdepthNext Hit, temperature, pressure, thickness, age, and play type for 11,833 sandstone reservoirs, mostly of Miocene age and younger, from the United States offshore Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Previous HitPorosityNext Hit shows wide scatter as a function of burial Previous HitdepthNext Hit, but the median (P50) Previous HitporosityNext Hit trend decreases smoothly with Previous HitdepthNext Hit. The GOM trend has much higher Previous HitporosityNext Hit for the given Previous HitdepthNext Hit than the P50 trend of sandstone reservoirs worldwide, reflecting rapid sedimentation rates and young ages of GOM reservoirs, most of which have spent relatively little time at temperatures more than 80degC, where quartz cementation becomes active. Multivariate regression analysis shows that Previous HitporosityNext Hit is best predicted by temperature (r2 = 0.40), with the fit improved slightly by adding age and then Previous HitdepthNext Hit (r2 = 0.44). Arithmetic average permeability (represented by its logarithm) shows a correlation of Previous HitmaximumNext Hit and P50 trends with Previous HitporosityNext Hit. GOM P50 permeability lies 0.2–0.4 log units below the P50 trend for sandstone reservoirs worldwide, probably reflecting very fine grain size of most GOM sands. Water saturation can be used to calculate the effective (petroleum-filled) Previous HitporosityNext Hit of each reservoir, which shows strong correlation with permeability. Grouping the reservoirs by chronozone reveals regular trends of decreasing average Previous HitporosityNext Hit and permeability with increasing age, reflecting increasing average Previous HitdepthNext Hit and temperature with age. Previous HitPorosityTop and permeability functions representing depositional sand quality show only subtle differences between different age groupings and play types. The results presented here can be useful for specifying realistic distributions of parameters for both exploration risk evaluation and reservoir modeling.

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