Evaluating the Influence of Pore Architecture and Initial Saturation on Wettability and Relative Permeability in Heterogeneous, Shallow-Shelf Carbonates

Thin (3-40 ft thick), heterogeneous, limestone and dolomite reservoirs, deposited in shallow-shelf environments, represent a significant fraction of the reservoirs in the U.S. midcontinent and worldwide. In Kansas, reservoirs of the Arbuckle, Mississippian, and Lansing-Kansas City formations account for over 73% of the 6.3 BBO cumulative oil produced over the last century. For these reservoirs basic petrophysical properties (e.g., porosity, absolute permeability, capillary pressure, residual oil saturation to waterflood, resistivity, and relative permeability) vary significantly horizontally, vertically, and with scale of measurement. Many of these reservoirs produce from structures of less than 30-60 ft, and being located in the capillary pressure transition zone, exhibit vertically variable initial saturations and relative permeability properties. Rather than being simpler to model because of their small size, these reservoirs challenge characterization and simulation methodology and illustrate issues that are less apparent in larger reservoirs where transition zone effects are minor and most of the reservoir is at saturations near S{sub wirr}. These issues are further augmented by the presence of variable moldic porosity and possible intermediate to mixed wettability and the influence of these on capillary pressure and relative permeability. Understanding how capillary-pressure properties change with rock lithology and, in turn, within transition zones, and how relative permeability and residual oil saturation to waterflood change through the transition zone is critical to successful reservoir management and as advanced waterflood and improved and enhanced recovery methods are planned and implemented. Major aspects of the proposed study involve a series of tasks to measure data to reveal the nature of how wettability and drainage and imbibition oil-water relative permeability change with pore architecture and initial water saturation. Focus is placed on carbonate reservoirs of widely varying moldic pore systems that represent the major of reservoirs in Kansas and are important nationally and worldwide. A goal of the project is to measure wettability, using representative oils from Kansas fields, on a wide range of moldic-porosity lithofacies that are representative of Kansas and midcontinent shallow-shelf carbonate reservoirs. This investigation will discern the relative influence of wetting and pore architecture. In the midcontinent, reservoir water saturations are frequently greater than 'irreducible' because many reservoirs are largely in the capillary transition zone. This can change the imbibition oil-water relative permeability relations. Ignoring wettability and transition-zone relative permeabilities in reservoir modeling can lead to over- and under-prediction of oil recovery and recovery rates, and less effective improved recovery management. A goal of this project is to measure drainage and imbibition oil-water relative permeabilities for a large representative range of lithofacies at differ ent initial water saturations to obtain relations that can be applied everywhere in the reservoir. The practical importance of these relative permeability and wettability models will be demonstrated by using reservoir simulation studies on theoretical/generic and actual reservoir architectures. The project further seeks to evaluate how input of these new models affects reservoir simulation results at varying scales. A principal goal is to obtain data that will allow us to create models that will show how to accurately simulate flow in the shallow-structure, complex carbonate reservoirs that lie in the transition zone. Tasks involved to meet the project objectives include collection and consolidation of available data into a publicly accessible relational digital database and collection of oil and rock samples from carbonate fields around the state (Task 1). Basic properties of these rocks and oils will be measured and used in wettability tests. Comparison will be performed between crude and synthetic oil wettability and evaluation made of how wettability is influenced by pore architecture (Task 2). Drainage and imbibition oil-water relative permeabilities will be measured on representative rock types obtained from across the state using crude and synthetic oil for a range of initial water saturations to evaluate the role that initial water saturation, wettability, and pore architecture play on relative permeability (Task 3). The new petrophysical models will be used to construct theoretical reservoir architecture models and new geomodels for two fields previously simulated using simpler models and for two new field locations in which native-state core will be obtained and analyzed (Task 4). Using the theoretical and real geomodels, simulations will both parametrically explore the influence of relative permeability differences and allow comparison with previous simulation models and results