SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium, June 13-16, 1993

HYDROCARBON DETECTION USING THE SHEAR W AVE TRA VEL TIME AND NEUTRON POROSITY IN SANDSTONE RESERVOIRS Lee Sanders: Halliburton Logging Services, Inc., Midland, Texas

ABSTRACT A successful technique is being used to evaluate sandstone reservoirs for hydrocarbons. The technique consists of crossplotting the shear wave travel time and the neutron porosity. The crossplot will produce a hydrocarbon indicator based upon the relationship between the travel time and the neutron porosity. The sandstone reservoirs that are hydrocarbon productive will exhibit a greater shear wave travel time than would be predicted from the neutron porosity. Those sandstone reservoirs that are non-productive exhibit a smaller shear wave travel time than would be predicted from the neutron porosity. The technique can be applied in the cased hole as well as the open hole logging environment. INTRODUCTION Most models that use acoustic data for hydrocarbon detection extract compressional and shear wave data from an acoustic full waveform log. (Figure 1). The relationship between the shear wave travel time and compressional wave travel time can be used to predict the presence of hydrocarbons. The presence of a compressible pore fluid, such as gas or oil with dissolved gas, causes a reduction in the acoustic velocity ratio (ATS/ ATC). There have been excellent papers written which examine the theoretical and practica! implications of using the velocity ratio technique (Murphy, et al., 1991; Williams, 1990). These papers consider sandstones of the Cretaceous age and younger with fairly high porosities. This paper considers the detection of hydrocarbons in sandstones of the Paleozoic age
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(Figure 2) in the Permian Basin. The technique evolved from an attempt to identify gas producing intervals in cased hole wells (Kessler and Sanders, 1989). In many wells the cement bond was of such poor quality that a compressional arrival was impossible to detect. Without a compressional travel time, there is no velocity ratio to compute. In wells with good bond, it was observed that the shear travel time approximated the values of the neutron porosity except in those intervals of anomalously low-velocity ratio values, which were gas productive. Therefore, in those cases where the cement bonding was inadequate to support a compressional wave, a dipole sonic tool was used to generate a shear wave. A shear wave travel time could then be compared to the neutron porosity for gas detection. The paper of Iverson and Walker, (1992) provides an excellent study of the empirical relationship between sonic and nuclear data. CONCEPf The mechanism that activates the hydrocarbon indicator is the presumption that the neutron porosity responds to the hydrogen content of the formation fluids and that the shear wave travel measures formation porosity regardless of the fluid composition. When gas is present in the formation fluids, the presence of the gas will reflectan apparent low neutron porosity value while the shear travel time, responding to "true" porosity, will exhibit a greater shear wave travel time than would be predicted from the neutron porosity. In "wet" zones, the presence of hydrogen rich fluids produce an apparent high neutron porosity value whi1e

SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium,

June 13-16, 1993

the shear travel time is a smaller value than would be predicted from the neutron porosity* In order to establish the proper scales to reflect matrix changes, a least-squares regression analysis showed that ATS=(290) * NPHI +80 defined the critical point for modifying travel time scales. This is to say that the data points falling above the regression line are plotted on a 70 to 170 microsecond scale. Those points falling below the regression line are plotted on a 60 to 160 microsecond span. (Figure 4). The regression line was calculated using a 32 well data set with the neutron and shear travel times picked from the potential pay zones. LOG EXAMPLES Example 1 Figure 5 shows the relationship between the neutron porosity and the shear wave travel time in differentiating between the productive and non-productive intervals. The well is a cased hole re-entry from Edwards County, Texas. The objective zone is a Canyon sand . The reservoir rock in offset wells consists of medium grained sandstones. The mineral composition is eighty percent quartz, ten percent potassium feldspars, and ten percent dolomite and clays. The mean shear wave travel time and mean neutron porosity in the productive zone is 135 microseconds and 14 percent porosity, respectively. There appear to be two other zones of production at X032 and X070 however, the shaded zone was perforated for CAOF 800 MCFPD and no water. Example 2 Figure 6 shows a comparison of the neutron porosity and shear travel time in a King sand from a cased hole re-entry in Conch0 County, Texas. This reservoir rock consists
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of medium to fine grained sandstone with a mineral composition of ninety percent quartz and ten percent dolomite. The mean neutron porosity is 20 percent and the mean shear wave travel time is 153 microseconds. The well was perforated from X030 to X060. The initial production for the well was 145 BOPD, 5 BWPD, and GOR of 500: 1. Example 3 Figure 7 is an example of an open hole well drilled in Eddy County, New Mexico. The example shows the relationship among the porosity crossplot, water saturation calculations, and the Gain curve. The Gain curve displays the response of the acoustic waveform tool to formation attentuation in the shear and compressional window. The higher values on the Gain curve correspond to higher formation attentuation, and lower water saturation calculations. With a decrease in formation attenuation, the water saturations increase. The Cherry Canyon sandstone in this well consists of fifty percent quartz, forty percent potassium feldspars and five percent dolomite. The mean shear wave travel time is 161 microseconds and the mean porosity is 22 percent. The well was perforated in the interval X025 to X040 for an initial production of 150 BOPD; no water was reported. Example 4 Figure 8 shows the productive interval of an open hole well in Eddy County, New Mexico. The reservoir rock is a medium to fine grained sandstone with a composition of forty percent quartz, forty percent potassium feldspars, ten percent clays, and ten percent dolomite. The mean shear wave travel time is 108 microseconds and the mean neutron porosity is 9.7%. The regression line for this data set is Y =225X + 86, placing the regression line within the area for the matrix scale using 60 to 160 microseconds. The well was perforat-

SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium, June 13-16, 1993

ed in the shaded intervals for an initial rate of 400 BOPD, 100 MCFPD, and 125 BWPD.
Example 5

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank Jan Brewer, Randy Thornton, and Charles Conley for their patience in the preparation of this paper.
REFERENCES

Figure 9 shows the productive interval in the Bone Spring formation in Eddy County, New Mexico. The reservoir rock is a siltstone composed of fifty percent quartz, ten percent potassium feldspars, fifteen percent dolomite, and fifteen percent clays (illite). The permeability is less the .05 millidarcies. The mean shear wave travel time is 112 microseconds and the mean neutron porosity is 10 percent. The well was perforated in the shaded areas for an initial production of 2.5 M*CFD.
CONCLUSIONS

Iverson, W., and Walker, J., 1992, Shear and compressional logs derived from nuclear logs, l?re Log Analyst, v. 33, no. 1, January-February, 9 p. Kessler, C., and Sanders, L., 1989, Cased hole hydrocarbon detection in the Permian Basin using the full wave sonic tool, SPE 19610: Society of Petroleum Engineers, presented at 64th Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, 8 p. Murphy, W.F., Schwartz, L.M., and Horn by, Brian, 1991, Interpretation physics of Vp and Vs in sedimentary rocks, paper FF, in 32nd Annual Logging Symposium Transactions: Society of Professional Well Log Analysts, 24 p. Williams, D.M., 1990, The acoustic log hydrocarbon indicator, paper v, in 31st Annual Logging Symposium Transactions: Society of Professional Well Log Analysts, 22 p.

The crossplot of the neutron porosity and shear wave travel time can be applied to sandstone reservoirs in both the open hole and cased hole environments. In this study the sandstone reservoirs varied in composition from an almost one hundred percent quartz composition to a quartz concentration of less than fifty percent. With the changes in the mineral composition and porosity values, a modification should be made to reflect the varying matrix travel time. The appropriate matrix travel time is defined by comparing the mean neutron porosity and mean shear wave travel time in the zone of interest to the least-squares regression line established for the Permian Basin. Although many zones will calculate nonproductive using standard water saturation calculations, if the hydrocarbon indicator is present in this technique, the zones have proven productive. On the other hand, many zones that calculated productive using standard water saturation calculations have been non productive when the hydrocarbon indicator is absent.

ABOUTTHEAUTHOR S

Lee Sanders is a Log Analyst for Halliburton Logging Services in Midland, Texas. He holds a BA degree from Texas Tech. He joined Welex (now Halliburton Logging Services) in 1971 in Houston, Texas working as a dipmeter analyst. He is a member of SPWLA, SPE, and West Texas Geological Society.

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SPWLA

34th Annual

Logging Symposium,

June

13-16, 1993

ACOUSTIC

FULL WAVE-FORM

LOG

COMPRESSIGNAL

Figure 1: Comprdonrl,
wlth
retpect

ahear, mndtube W8V8

log.

8rdvrl8

to tlm8 on the full wrvs-form

PERMIAN BASlN - CORRELATlON SYSTEM f f

B

CHART EXAMPLE EXAMPLE 1 EXANPLE 4 ULE 5

SERlES QuADMuPMN _Y

FORMATION CANYON

MU8HY CANYON

S 2
3 3 % !!I a

LEONARDIAN

BOESPMNG

CISCO

KINGsAm

EXAMPLE 2

CANYON

EXAWLEl

Figun Pd8ll

2: Strrtionphic cornblion BttiIl fOr th8 OX8mpk

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chrrt of the Wd18 in thit 8tUdy.

SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium, June 13-16, 1993

INDEX MAP - TEXAS AND NEW MEXICO

Figure 3: Index map of Texas and New Mexico showing wall locations for examples used in the study.

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SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium, June 13-16.1993

LINEAR REGRESSION FOR MATRIX TRAVEL TIME

18i

16C
170 70 ,J 0 1
1

14(

0 0 B

12(
, 4

,+
9
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60 NEUTRON POROSITY ( % ) LIMESTONE MATRIX

Figure 4: The crosrplot of the shear wave travel time and the neutron porosity data set establishiig a regression line. The ngrersion line definer the matrix travel times for an interval.

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SPWIA

34th Annual Logging Symposium,

June 13-16, 1993

Canyon Sands Edwards County, Tsxas Cased Hole

GAMMA b
150 l?O

MS/F1

DTS

70

DTS 9 135 ms NPHI b 14 %

Flgun 5: A crrod holo well in Edwrrd8 County comp8nt th8 rha8r w8v8 travel tlm8 8nd n8utron porority. The 8hrd8d 8~88 rhowr the hydrocrrbon hdlcator wlth the nONrOnpOKb8ity VdU8 rerrding1888 th8n th8 8h88r WtV8 tt3V.i tlm8.

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SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium, June 13-16.1993

King Sandstone Conch0 County, Texas Cased Hole 11~1~1~1~1~~~~

GAMMA 0
API 150 ,3

LIMEsTONE

w -1-11-111-11.
MATRIX DTS

-.lO

KOW

Figure 6: A cared holo n-entry shaded ngion.

ahowing hydrocarbon

indicator in tba

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SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium. June 13-16, 1993

Cherry Canyon Eddy County, New Mexico T21-S

GAMMA
1
API

100

NPHI ,111~~11~~~~11~~~~11~~~~~~~. LIMESTONE MATRIX 3 DTS MSlFT

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o___~~~-~ GAIN
coo0

70

70

SW 60 ff

*DTS : 161 ms 22% I

NPHI =

4-t
Fire 7: The productive interval shows an increase in the value of the Gain curve with decnrrmg water saturations.
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SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium, June 13-16, 1993

Brushy Canyon Eddy County, New Mexico T23S

KlOO

Figum 8: This inted roquirodI matrix change on the shoe wave tmvoi time do to wtivsto the hydrocarbon indiutor. The ngnrsion iino for tiis intomiis y * 225x 86, y * dts and x 31tlpk

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SPWLA 34th Annual Logging Symposium, June 13-16, 1993

Bone Spring Eddy County, New Mexico

DTS