Elastic-Electrical Rock-Physics Template for the Characterization of Tight-Oil Reservoir Rocks

Tight-oil reservoirs have low porosity and permeability, with microcracks, high clay content, and a complex structure resulting in strong heterogeneities and poor connectivity. Thus, it is a challenge to characterize this type of reservoir with a single geophysical methodology. We propose a dual-porosity-clay parallel network to establish an electrical model and the Hashin-Shtrikman and differential effective medium equations to model the elastic properties. Using these two models, we compute the rock properties as a function of saturation, clay content, and total and microcrack porosities. Moreover, a 3D elastic-electrical template, based on resistivity, acoustic impedance, and Poisson’s ratio, is built. Well-log data is used to calibrate the template. We collect rock samples and log data (from two wells) from the Songliao Basin (China) and analyze their microstructures by scanning electron microscopy. Then, we study the effects of porosity and clay content on the elastic and electrical properties and obtain a good agreement between the predictions, log interpretation, and actual production reports.