Petrofacies-Dependent Cementation Factor Relationship for Low-Resistivity Miocene Carbonates: Mumbai Offshore Basin

Abstract

Summary In Mumbai offshore, Miocene carbonates are deposited with intermediate clastic inputs under cyclic sea level changes and have undergone diagenesis from time to time. Miocene carbonate layers deposited southwest of Mumbai High are producing a good amount of hydrocarbon from 1 to 2 Ω·m resistivity pays. A total of 58 representative core plugs from four different wells were studied to identify the reason for low resistivity and to classify rock facies types and porosity systems using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thin-section nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and petrophysical core data. It was observed from the core study that Miocene carbonates have complex porosity systems and mud-supported to grain-supported reservoir facies. Dominance of mud-supported matrix is the main reason for low resistivity in Miocene carbonate layers as observed from integrated advanced log and core studies. Conventional petrophysical evaluation using constant petrophysical parameters (a, m, n) or linear correlation of cementation factor with porosity can lead to erroneous results in this scenario. A petrofacies-dependent correlation among cementation factor and porosity is attempted in this study for realistic evaluation of low-resistivity carbonate reservoirs. Different cementation factors vs. porosity relations have been derived for various carbonate formations worldwide. Shell formula demonstrates that cementation factor increases with decreasing porosity while correlation derived by Borai and Rafiee brought out inverse relation among cementation factors with porosity in tight carbonates and is providing almost constant cementation factor beyond 0.2. But, in our study, a core porosity-cementation factor plot of reservoir facies is showing that below 0.1, m values are increasing with increase of porosity, which is contradictory to Shell formula. This trend of cementation factor at low porosities is due to the presence of secondary porosity. In the porosity range 0.1–0.25, cementation factor increases eventually with the increase of porosity, but beyond porosity values 0.25, increase in porosity causes decrease of cementation factor. This is due to increasing content of mud-supported matrix, which is overall increasing the total porosity but eventually decreasing cementation in a rock. A new nonlinear correlation has been established between m and porosity for Miocene carbonates of Mumbai offshore area, by incorporating all the factors affecting cementation factor (m). Finally, saturation estimated using variable m either using newly established core derived correlation or resistivity image data is giving representative and improved saturation against low-resistivity reservoir layers compared with constant m.