Abstract:
For oil and gas companies, accelerating the process of assessing reserves is a strategic imperative.
Often, core analysis appears to be a bottleneck for achieving this objective. Lab results must not only be accurate, but also quickly available. In some instances, the challenge can be met by simply rethinking the way in which certain well-established things are done. No sophisticated tools are required, just a change of perspective. An example is the compression of the amount of time that elapses between the acquisition of electric logs and the release of their final interpretation.
Typically this time is of the order of several months because of the long equilibrium times required during core analysis. This can, however, be reduced to a few days working under non-equilibrium conditions. The instrumentation needed to do this is commonly available.
Another example is the estimation of the amount of gas trapped by water influx, a critical parameter that may generate considerable uncertainty in the evaluation of recoverable reserves. By combining centrifuge and NMR measurements, it is possible to produce an exhaustive compilation of data in one day using just one core sample. Again, nothing but conventional instruments are required to do this type of analysis.
Real applications are presented to show how these methods work. The "take home" message is that even long-established laboratory practices may have room for improvement and sometimes relatively small changes generate significant benefits.
About Author
Nicola Bona, Technical Leader of the Petroleum Engineering Laboratories, ENI
Nicola Bona is technical leader of the Petroleum Engineering Laboratories at ENI. Besides providing operative support for the characterization and development of oil and gas fields worldwide, he is actively involved in designing equipments and experimental protocols aimed at increasing the accuracy of petrophysical measurements and speeding up their execution.
Among other things, Nicola pioneered the use of dielectric measurements to assess rock wettability and developed innovative laboratory tools for assessing the elctrical response of rock. He developed also new techniques for the evaluation of fractured reservoirs, shaly rocks and tight sands which make use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Nicola authored over 30 papers and holds two patents.
He has a specialization in plasma physics from the University of Milan.