THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF PETROPHYSICAL PROPERTIES FROM VUG AND FRACTURE DISTRIBUTION IN A CARBONATE RESERVOIR

• Grant number: 25/01939-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Geosciences - Geophysics
• Principal Investigator: Emilson Pereira Leite
• Grantee: Olusegun Benard Akinmuda
• 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 main objective of this project is to develop a new methodology that is able to characterize and model petrophysical properties distribution resulting from vugs and fractures that are present in a pre-salt carbonate reservoir offshore Brazil. The Brazilian pre-salt carbonate reservoirs exhibit high heterogeneity at all scales, which makes their quality prediction to ensure high recovery factors a difficult task (e.g. Soltanmohammadi et al., 2021). One of the main challenges is the complex and heterogeneous nature of porosity, leading to a large variation in permeability. Natural fractures and vugs often play a significant role on carbonate reservoir performance because they affect productivity and injectivity and may also control water breakthrough within the reservoir (e.g. Aydin, 2000). Vugs and fractures can also significantly increase the total porosity of the reservoir, in addition to primary porosity of the matrix. Natural open fractures contribute to the development of excess permeability in combination with caverns, amalgamated cavern damage zones and vugs (Chicuta et al., 2022). This project will address this challenge by developing a methodology to understand the three-dimensional geometries involved, their connectivity and the petrophysical properties allocated to fractures and vugs. This will involve the combination of the relevant data at the well-log scale (e.g. image logs and petrophysical logs) and 3D seismic data. Analysis of subseismic features will also be conducted. The methodology will be based on discrete fracture networks (DFN) (e.g. Chicuta et al., 2022). In DFN models, vugs can be modeled as three dimensional discrete features. Recent developed seismic-petrophysical inversion methods will also be investigated (e.g. Grana et al., 2022). It is expected that the final models will be suitable for reservoir simulations and production prediction.