Advances in Sandstone Reservoir Quality Prediction Using Early-Diagenesis Process Models

Joanna Ajdukiewicz
ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company

Current reservoir-quality predictive models calculate the impact of burial compaction and high-temperature cementation on given lithologies. In most models, the lithologies are based on petrographic data from analogues. Where analogue data are inexact or scarce, or the spatial distribution of reservoir quality lithologies at depth must be mapped, predictions may be enhanced by the development of appropriate earlydiagenetic process models. Because diagenesis initiates in groundwater regimes present soon after deposition, early processes and attributes may be predictable in the context of paleohydrologic and sequence-stratigraphic settings. Earlydiagenetic process models can be used to 1) identify analogue data sets appropriate to the predictive target, 2) predict, in the absence of analogue data, the occurrence of early diagenetic grain-coats, pore-filling cements, and secondary porosity in target facies, and 3) map or risk reservoir quality variability within a single depositional facies at similar burial conditions.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90185 © AAPG Geoscience Technology Workshop, Revisiting Reservoir Quality Issues in Unconventional and Conventional Resources, Austin, Texas, November 12-13, 2013