Abstract

As shallow-water areas are becoming fully exploited frontiers of exploration is being pushed further and further into deep water focusing on economically important deep-water turbidite sands. Micro-resistivity borehole image logs are well-established tool of geologists and reservoir engineers and an increasingly critical component in evaluating the full potential of a field prior the initiation of the development phase. These data are used for detailed reservoir description providing high-resolution structural, stratigraphic, and sedimentological information. For thinly laminated turbidite sequences they are often the only practical method of determining net pay thickness in the absence of whole core data. When combined with advanced open-hole logging instruments, such as the multi-component induction log, borehole images significantly improves petrophysical evaluation of thinly bedded sand-shale sequences.

The EARTH Imager brings the well-established performance of existing micro-resistivity imagers to the non-conductive mud arena. The implementation of two unique and innovative technologies, electrical energy coupling and non-planar focusing, matched with an optimized sensor array geometry resulted in this new micro-resistivity borehole imager that acquires image data sets of high vertical and azimuthal resolution. The combination of the fine resolution of its measurements with the large borehole coverage makes the EARTH Imager particularly suitable for the most demanding imaging applications, such as deep-water exploration.