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Petroleum Geoscience

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Permeability prediction using stress sensitive petrophysical properties

Department of Petroleum Engineering, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK

The correlation of stress sensitivity to various petrophysical parameters was studied by analysis of experimental results from a range of sandstone core plugs tested hydrostatically at room temperature. The parameters measured were: compressional wave velocity, porosity, permeability and electrical resistivity. More detailed information on the effects of sorting and grain size distributions was obtained from experiments on artificial, unconsolidated sandstone cores. The measurements showed a high degree of stress sensitivity, which was different for each core but, broadly, could be classified as either high or low stress sensitivity. Cores from the high permeability clean sand were less stress sensitive than the cores from the low permeability coarsening-upwards sequence and the petrophysical values when combined into a synthetic log distinguished between the two lithologies. The results were compared to the predictions of a simple asperity deformation model. The experimental results and the model suggested a possible logging strategy to deduce permeability, by varying wellbore pressure.

KEYWORDS: stress sensitivity, acoustic property, permeability, grain sorting