Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Murray K. Gingras
S. George Pemberton
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Michael Smith
Maturn, Venezuela
> Surface expressions of burrows under the surface. As the tide retreats at the Bay of Vallay, North Uist, Scotland, small wormlike animals burrow into the
soft, silty sand searching for food. By the thousands, they create shallow tunnels but leave waste on the surface (left). In this example, the fecal piles cover
an area of at least 5 km2 [2 mi2] (right).
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Oilfield Review
> Bioturbation on the surface and in the subsurface. Bioturbation includes animal imprints and tunnels created by burrowing
animals. The photographs of the crab burrow (left ) and the ant nest (middle) are from the sandy backshore of beaches near
Savannah, Georgia, USA. (Photographs courtesy of Murray K. Gingras.) The photograph of the dinosaur footprint (right ) is from
Dinosaur State Park, Connecticut, USA.
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> Traces, shafts and tunnels. Marine animals that live at or near the sediment/water interface leave traces of various shapes, sizes and complexity.
(Adapted from Gingras et al, reference3.)
Dwelling
(Domichnia)
Crawling
(Repichnia)
Farming
(Agrichnia)
Grazing
(Pascichnia)
Oilfield Review
AUTUMN 14
Bioturbation Fig. 3
ORAUT14-BIOT 3
> Traces of animal behavior. Ichnologists interpret traces to indicate animal activities such as escaping, dwelling, crawling, feeding, farming and grazing,
among others. Traces may be variations or combinations of these. The behaviors are loosely associated with depositional settings of higher energy (top)
and lower energy (bottom) and may be considered a continuum. A variety of species might produce similar structures if their activities are similar. A single
species can create several kinds of traces while performing different activities and the traces may vary if made in different substrates. (Adapted from
Gingras et al, reference3.)
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3 cm
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M
Mottled
or
M
Massive
Appearing
Burrowed
Pervasively burrowed
Mud
Sand
Unburrowed or
Laminated
Freshwater
or
Oxygen depleted
Cross-bedded
Lacustrine, quiescent
bay or deep marine
Laminated
Load-casted bedding
contacts and abundant
organic detritus
Quiescent bay
or lagoon, possibly
tidal flat
Freshwater
or
High sedimentation rate
Penecontemporaneous
deformation observed
in association with
massive media
Moderate to rare,
evenly distributed
Sand
Burrowed contacts
at top or bottom of
massive-appearing
sediment, or vestigial
burrows evident locally
Large,
diverse
Distal prodelta
open bay
Small
Moderate to rare
Sporadically distributed
Mud
Laminated to scrambled
High sedimentation
rates and variable
depositional conditions
Small
Sediment
gravity flow
or
Large,
diverse
Downward
hydraulic jump
or
or
Fluvial, fluviolacustrine
or deltaic
True cryptic
bioturbation
bedding
or
Inner shelf
offshore
Large, diverse
ichnofossils
Small
ichnofossils,
low diversity
Freshwater
Planar
Unimodal
distribution of grains,
no mineralogic diversity
of grains
Event sedimentation
generally dominated (temporally)
by fair-weather processes
Proximal prodelta
or delta front
bay mouth complex
Inner estuary
tidal channel
Large,
diverse
Lower shoreface
Small
Bays or deltas
Rarely point bars
> Interpreting depositional conditions from bioturbation texture. Classifying sedimentary textures into three typesunburrowed or laminated, burrowed and
mottled or massive appearinghelps ichnologists infer depositional environment. (Adapted from Gingras et al, reference3.)
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Bioturbation
Index
Percent
Bioturbated
Classification
1 to 4
5 to 30
31 to 60
61 to 90
91 to 99
100
No bioturbation
> Bioturbation index. The bioturbation index is a scheme for quantifying the
degree of sediment bioturbation. The index grades trace abundance and
overlap and the resultant loss of primary sedimentary fabric. (Adapted from
Taylor and Goldring, reference7.)
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AUTUMN 14
Bioturbation Fig. 7
ORAUT14-BIOT 7
3 cm
3 cm
> Cryptic bioturbation. Some biogenic activity leaves no distinct traces but instead results in
widespread, subtle disruption of the original sedimentary fabric. In an outcrop-derived core from the
Cretaceous Ferron Sandstone, Utah, USA (left ), bioturbation is extensive, but some layering is still
intact. Cryptic bioturbation in a wellbore core from the Eocene Mirador Formation, Colombia (middle),
has destroyed much of the original layering. In a wellbore core from the Middle Jurassic Bruce field
in the North Sea (right), it has obliterated any sign of layering. (Adapted from Pemberton et al,
reference 9.)
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Depth,
ft
Depth,
ft
X,X06
X,X06
X,X07
X,X07
X,X08
X,X08
X,X09
X,X09
X,X10
X,X10
X,X11
X,X11
X,X12
X,X12
X,X13
X,X13
X,X14
X,X14
3 cm
> Orinoco wellbore image. A feature in an FMI image (left) may be interpreted (middle) as a U-shaped
burrow. A photograph from an unrelated core (right ) shows a burrow of the type (an ichnofossil known
as Arenicolites) that may be present in the FMI image. The green lines represent formation structural
dip; the yellow lines are fractures. (Photograph copyright S. George Pemberton.)
Depth,
ft
Depth,
ft
X,X03
X,X03
3 cm
X,X04
X,X04
X,X05
X,X05
X,X06
X,X06
X,X07
X,X07
X,X08
X,X08
X,X09
X,X09
X,X10
X,X10
X,X11
X,X11
Oilfield Review
AUTUMN 14
Bioturbation Fig. 9
ORAUT14-BIOT 9
> Wellbore image of possible bioturbation. The FMI image (left) has high-resistivity (light colored)
features that may be interpreted (middle) to be burrows resembling the ichnofossil Thalassinoides
(right ) in an unrelated core. The structures are classified as dwelling and feeding burrows of a
deposit-feeding crustacean living in lower shoreface to offshore environments. (Photograph copyright
S. George Pemberton.)
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Depth,
ft
Depth,
ft
X,X04
X,X04
X,X05
X,X05
X,X06
X,X06
X,X07
X,X07
X,X08
X,X08
X,X09
X,X09
X,X10
X,X10
X,X11
X,X11
X,X12
X,X12
X,X13
X,X13
X,X14
X,X14
X,X15
X,X15
X,X16
X,X16
X,X17
X,X17
3 cm
> A low-resistivity conical feature. An FMI image (left ) from a well in Venezuela exhibits a lowresistivity (dark) conical structure (middle) that resembles the vertical burrow ichnofossil Rosselia
(right ), although the scales are quite different. An Ichnofossil of this type is a vertically oriented
single-entrance burrow that has an opening that expands to create a funnel shape. These burrows
are commonly filled with sediment that is of finer grain than that of the host layer. These are feeding
or dwelling burrows of deposit feeders and are indicators of lower shoreface to full marine settings.
The yellow lines represent formation dip; the blue lines may be flooding surfaces. (Photograph
copyright S. George Pemberton.)
Oilfield Review
AUTUMN 14
13. Taylor AM and Gawthorpe RL: Application of Sequence
11. Grain size, organic content, local energy and sediment
Bioturbation Fig.
11 and Trace Fossil Analysis to Reservoir
Stratigraphy
cohesiveness are other factors that may influence
Description:
Examples from the Jurassic of the North
colonization patterns.
ORAUT14-BIOT
11
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Over the past few decades, oil company geologists have used trace fossil input mainly in exploration and development efforts such as those in
the Orinoco example. Recently, they have begun
to incorporate this information in productionrelated studies.
Bioturbation Effects on Production
Bioturbation can destroy or enhance permeability. Geologists generally consider bioturbation
detrimental to permeability; biogenic churning
tends to undo grain sorting, and redistribution of
fine clay grains can reduce overall permeability
of layered media. However, evidence in recent
3 cm
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Oilfield Review
> Development of a super-k layer in the Ghawar field, Saudi Arabia. Geologists propose that the superpermeability in the Jurassic Arab-D interval developed
when regionally extensive erosion exposed a low-porosity micritic calcite firmground (A). Crustaceans colonized this firm sediment, creating a dense
network of burrows (B). The burrows filled with detrital sucrosic dolomite (C), which is more porous and permeable than the micritic calcite that contains
the burrows. Oil (gold) flows freely though the resulting super-k layer (D). (Adapted from Pemberton and Gingras, reference 14.)
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tinguish between effective and ineffective porosity, leading to inaccurate calculations of reserves.
To determine if other logs would be more suitable for assessing effective porosity and permeability, the geologists correlated the rock and pore
types identified in the core with other wireline log
responses; they began by matching core gamma
ray responses with well log gamma ray readings.
Of the available well logsgamma ray, resistivity,
sonic, density porosity and neutron porosity
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Gamma Ray
Density Porosity
Neutron Porosity
Sonic Porosity
Plug Porosity
Plug Permeability
gAPI
25
50
%
50 40 30 20 10 0
%
50 40 30 20 10 0
%
50 40 30 20 10 0
%
50 40 30 20 10 0
mD
75
0.1
10,000
Deep Resistivity
0.1
ohm.m
10,000
Deep Resistivity
Minus Medium
Resistivity
0.1
ohm.m
10,000
Reservoir
top
Oil/water
contact
> Well logs and core data from the E Member of the Natih Formation, Al Ghubar field, Oman. Reservoir underperformance led geologists to reevaluate log
and core measurements to determine the best indicators of effective porosity and permeability. Only the logs of deep resistivity (Track 7) and of the
difference between medium and deep resistivity (Track 8) showed clear correlations with core plug permeability (Track 6). High-permeability zones are
shown by yellow shading. (Adapted from Smith et al, reference 17.)
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Oilfield Review
0 to 1 mD
1 to 10 mD
10 to 100 mD
> 100 mD
2 cm
1 cm
1 cm
> Spot permeametry and microCT analysis of samples from the Wabamun Group in Alberta, Canada. In this formation,
permeability is increased where burrows are associated with localized bioturbation. A core sample (top left ) exhibits dolomiteassociated trace fossils (light brown) and a nondolomitized lime mudstone matrix (light gray). Results of spot permeametry
measurements (top middle) can be contoured to produce a permeability map (top right ). The highest permeability values are up to
340 mD and correspond to the dolomitized trace fossils. MicroCT scans in 3D (bottom, top row) at 34-m resolution reveal mineral
phases in five cross sections of a core sample. The dolomite-filled burrows are represented as shades of blue, lime mudstone
matrix as light gray and vugs as unfilled holes (demarcated by black arrows). The 2D cross-sectional images at the bottom were
used to constrain the attenuation phases within the core sample. In these images, the dolomite-filled burrows appear in light
gray, limestone matrix in dark gray and vugs in black.
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100
10
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
Year
> Production history in an ichnofossil-hosted tight gas reservoir. Monthly gas production from a well in the Pine
Creek field shows early production from gas-filled burrows in the first 15 or 20 years. Gas production then declines
because the gas must diffuse from the low-permeability matrix into the burrows to be produced.
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Oilfield Review