Fluids saturations in new wells are usually derived from resistivity measurements, using locally selected or calibrated resistivity equations. Some drawbacks to resistivity measurements are multiple environmental corrections in high-angle wells, thin beds, washed-out boreholes, and complex invasion profiles. Moreover, the accuracy of Archie's equation may suffer from variable cementation and saturation exponents and unknown water salinity.A recently introduced comprehensive suite of consonant logging-while-drilling (LWD) nuclear measurements with linear mixing laws, is used to solve for minerals and fluid volumes independent of resistivity measurements. This requires the petrophysical properties of all the fluids present to be known. Another requirement for accurate formation evaluation is the mud filtrate invasion correction. While this poses no problem for multiple depths of investigation (MDOI) resistivity measurements that also read deep into the formation, there is no set rule to determine the geometrical factor of nuclear measurements to account for invasion. This paper describes an LWD time-lapse data acquisition scheme to circumvent invasion effects on nuclear measurments and to eliminate the need to specify some of the unknown petrophysical properties of the fluids present. Canonical-correlation analysis (CCA) is used to identify canonical variates that remain unchanged between a primary drill pass and a secondary wipe pass. Because these variates remain unchanged between passes, they are independent of the formation invasion status, and can represent the properties of either the virgin or the flushed zone, but not a combination of the two, as is typically the case of measurements whose volume of investigation samples both zones. These invasion-independent variates are then used in the petrophysical evaluation, instead of the standard logs which may otherwise vary with time.We used CCA in 2 carbonate examples to show how to 1) correct bulk density measurement in corkscrew borehole, 2) correct MDOI capture sigma measurements for invasion effect, and 3) perform volumetric formation evaluation without knowledge of the water and hydrocarbon endpoints and invasion parameters. The CCA approach is a significant new development in well log interpretation that removes uncertainties associated with unknown mineral or fluids petrophysical properties and invasion status.
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