FRACTURE AND VUG CHARACTERIZATION BASED ON CORES, COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY AND BOREHOLE IMAGE, AND ITS IMPACT IN RESERVOIR QUALITY AND FLOW PROPERTIES

• Grant number: 25/00459-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences - Geology
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Campane Vidal
• Grantee: Najlah Zeitoum de Souza
• Host Institution: Centro de Estudos de Energia e Petróleo (CEPETRO). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Company: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Engenharia Mecânica (FEM)
• Associated research grant: 17/15736-3 - Engineering Research Centre in Reservoir and Production Management, AP.PCPE

Abstract

The characterization of the carbonate porous system can be a complex process due to thehigh heterogeneity of pore morphology, size, and distribution at different scales of observation.As presented by some authors (CHOQUETTE and PRAY, 1970; LUCIA, 1999; LØNØY, 2006;AHR, 2008) the control of porosity in carbonate rocks varies from depositional to diageneticprocess. From the depositional point of view, the pores may vary according to the rock texture asa result of the differences on the environmental energy that is able to sort grains and preserves theprimary pore system, while the diagenetic factors reflect the post-depositional process such asdissolution, cementation and fracturing of the carbonate rocks which may increase or reduce theoriginal porosity.In reservoir modeling, understanding of the permo-porous system is essential since itsdistribution will control the oil production. Thus, the definition of facies distribution, diageneticevolution and porosity quantification become part of this process, especially the characterizationof fractures and vuggy pores, due to their ability to create excess permeability zones (excess-k)in the reservoir (MENEZES DE JESUS; COMPAN; SURMAS et al., 2016; MENEZES DEJESUS et al., 2019; WENNBERG et al., 2021). The vuggy porosity is not controlled by the fabricof carbonate rock and can occur arbitrarily (CHOQUETTE and PRAY, 1970) in addition to theirsize that may vary from small (millimetric scale) to very large vugs (e.g., caves). Similarly, thefractures may have different sizes, orientations, and apertures which varies in space. Therefore, agood porosity modeling, capturing the characteristics of the vugs and fractures, and includinguncertainties, is very useful for reservoir simulations.Based on this, the objective of this project is to develop a reliable workflow for fractureand vug characterization for pre-salt carbonate reservoirs integrating datasets at different scalesby improving/developing upscaling methods. For this purpose, it will be combined the porosityresults and interpretations of core section (thin sections included), computed tomography (CT)from cores and plugs and borehole image logs (BHI), and determine the impact of the combinedmultiscale features in reservoir quality and fluid flow properties.