Anatomy of a Giant Carbonate Reservoir

Despite declining production rates, existing reservoirs in the United States contain large quantities of remaining oil and gas that constitute an enormous target for improved diagnosis and imaging of reservoir properties. The resource target is especially large in carbonate reservoirs, where con entional data and methodologies are normally insufficient to resolve critical scales of reservoir heterogeneity. The objectives of the research described in this volume were to develop and test such methodologies for improvedimaging, measurement, modeling, and prediction of reservoir properties in carbonate hydrocarbon reservoirs. The focus of the study is the Permian Fullerton Clear Fork reservoir of the Permian Basin of west Texas. This reservoir is an especially appropriate choice because the Permian Basin is the la gest oil-bearing basin in the United States and, as a play, Clear Fork reservoirs have exhibited the lowest recovery efficiencies of all carbonate reservoirs in the Permian Basin.