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Joint elastic‐electrical effective medium models of reservoir sandstones
Author(s) -
Han Tongcheng,
Best Angus I.,
MacGregor Lucy M.,
Sothcott Jeremy,
Minshull Tim A.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
geophysical prospecting
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.735
H-Index - 79
eISSN - 1365-2478
pISSN - 0016-8025
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2478.2011.00956.x
Subject(s) - geology , electrical resistivity and conductivity , porosity , igneous petrology , joint (building) , brine , mineralogy , economic geology , porous medium , gemology , pore water pressure , regional geology , engineering geology , geotechnical engineering , hydrogeology , metamorphic petrology , thermodynamics , seismology , architectural engineering , physics , engineering , volcanism , electrical engineering , tectonics
Improvements in the joint inversion of seismic and marine controlled source electromagnetic data sets will require better constrained models of the joint elastic‐electrical properties of reservoir rocks. Various effective medium models were compared to a novel laboratory data set of elastic velocity and electrical resistivity (obtained on 67 reservoir sandstone samples saturated with 35 g/l brine at a differential pressure of 8 MPa) with mixed results. Hence, we developed a new three‐phase effective medium model for sandstones with pore‐filling clay minerals based on the combined self‐consistent approximation and differential effective medium model. We found that using a critical porosity of 0.5 and an aspect ratio of 1 for all three components, the proposed model gave accurate model predictions of the observed magnitudes of P‐wave velocity and electrical resistivity and of the divergent trends of clean and clay‐rich sandstones at higher porosities. Using only a few well‐constrained input parameters, the new model offers a practical way to predict in situ porosity and clay content in brine saturated sandstones from co‐located P‐wave velocity and electrical resistivity data sets.