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New Tools and Approaches in Reservoir Quality Prediction

Dave L. Cantrell¹ and Cedric M. Griffiths²
¹Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
²CSIRO, Kensington, WA, Australia

Reservoir quality prediction has historically been the "holy grail" of reservoir geologists, yet few have been completely successful at achieving this in a truly quantitative fashion. Saudi Aramco, like many oil companies, has long had an active reservoir quality study program that traditionally was based on qualitative studies of outcrop, well and seismic data, and to a lesser extent, observations of modern sedimentary processes. Prediction results from such studies were frequently less than optimal.

The workflow illustrated provides a geological, (almost) first principles approach for predicting reservoir quality in areas where no well control exists. While much still remains to be done to improve the robustness and ease-of-use of this workflow, it shows good potential for helping to reduce risk in exploration and development drilling and decision-making.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #120034©2012 AAPG Hedberg Conference Fundamental Controls on Flow in Carbonates, Saint-Cyr Sur Mer, Provence, France, July 8-13, 2012