Date 29/10/2019

Relationship between porosity and permeambility of

reservoir rock ??

Supervisor:

Dr Nasser al mouafa
Done by:

En:Hamza muzahem

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Abstract
Most of oil reservoirs in the world occur in carbonate rocks. Thus, characterization
of the carbonate reservoirs, including understanding the correlation between
porosity and permeability is essentially required to enhance oil recovery. Compared
with the other sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and shale, the carbonate rocks
would exhibit a wide variety of vertical and horizontal heterogeneities. In general,
pores of the carbonate rocks can be affected by mineral dissolution, replacement
by other minerals and re-crystallization, which are the post-depositional processes.
Permeability has been estimated at a wide scale by thin section image analysis,
rock core experiments, geophysical well logging data and large scale aquifer tests.
For the same porosity, the permeability might show a wide variation. In this study,
a large number of the porosity and the permeability data pairs for world wide
carbonate rocks (reservoirs) were collected from many literatures. The porosity and
permeability data were grouped according to test scale, the reservoir location and
the rock types. As is already known, the relation showed a rather scattered
distribution also in this study, not monotonous, which indicates that higher
porosity does not mean higher permeability of the rock formation. This study
provides the analysis results and implications for oil production of the carbonate
reservoirs.

INTRODUCTION
Tests of petro physical data for correlations between porosity, , and permeability, k, are very
common in geological and engineering applications However, it is possible that a core sample
has fairly low porosity but may have relatively high permeability such as the Ste. Genevieve
oolid grain stone formation Alternatively, core samples can have extremely high porosity with
very low permeability as in many types of carbonate rocks such as the North Sea chalk
((|>>40%, k>60%, k and k are observed but they are strongly dependent on pore structure.
Besides threshold pressure and porosity, the pore throat size distribution, as indicated by

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capillary pressure, Pc, curve shape, also affects permeability because it is the distribution of
pore throats that determines how much pore volume is accessed by macro-pore throats (in
the low no wetting phase saturation, £N, range) and how much is accessed by micropore
throats (in the high 5N range). Therefore, prediction of permeability requires information on
threshold pressure, porosity, and pore throat size distribution.
Porosity and Permeability Porosity
Porosity lies been classified by as inter particle and fuggy . Inter particle porosity includes
inter grain and/or inter crystal porosities and correlates reasonably well with permeability.
Porosity identified as vuggy , which may include separate vugs and fractures, does not
correlate with permeability. Porosity of porous media is defined as, 4> = Vp/VB, where Vf is
the pore volume and VB the bulk volume. Conceptually, if yP=total pore volume, the porosity
is the total porosity. If VP=effective pore volume, the porosity is the effective porosity.
Obviously, the effective porosity will correlate better with permeability than the total
porosity. However, the difference between the total and effective porosities is generally very
small for sedimentary rocks and will be neglected. For a core sample of bulk volume VB,
porosity is proportional to the pore volume. Although all the pore bodies and their throats
contribute to porosity, pore bodies (because of their size) play a much more important role
than the pore throats.

Porosity and permeability

are related properties of any rock or loose
sediment. Both are related to the number, size,
and connections of openings in the rock. More
specifically, porosity of a rock is a measure of its
ability to hold a fluid. Mathematically, it is the
open space in a rock divided by the total rock
volume (solid and space). Permeability is a
measure of the ease of flow of a fluid through a
porous solid. A rock may be extremely porous,
but if the pores are not connected, it will have no
permeability. Likewise, a rock may have a few

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continuous cracks which allow ease of fluid flow, but when porosity is calculated, the rock doesn't
seem very porous. Louisiana subsurface sediments consist mostly of gravel, sand and clay. Clay is the
most porous sediment but is the least permeable. Clay usually acts as an aquifer , impeding the flow of
water. Gravel and sand are both porous and permeable, making them good aquifer materials. Gravel

Permeability-Porosity
Relationship
It its simplest form, permeability can be predicted from the log–linear relationship

with porosity determined from core analysis (Figure 3.18). Too often no

more thought is given to the problem and only one relationship is propagated

through the geological and petrophysical models. In reality, there is no causal

relationship between porosity and permeability; rather, permeability is a

function of grain size and sorting and the resultant pore throat size distribution.

However, permeability can also be related to many other properties,

either empirically or intrinsically, including pore surface area, irreducible

water saturation, relative permeability and capillary pressure. In well log analysis,

the only available predictor is porosity alone or possibly in combination

with water saturation and volume of shale.

The first step in the workflow is to establish an empirical relationship

between

core‐derived porosity and permeability, constrained by some zone

(stratigraphic) or facies classification. The porosity data should be overburden

corrected where possible and calibrated with liquid permeability results if

possible. The data should be plotted with porosity on the x‐axis and the logarithm

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of permeability on the y‐axis; in this case the prediction will be a y‐on‐x

Porosity vs Permeability - all data

Porosity (frac)

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Permeability Types
•Absolute Permeability (k):

When the medium is completely saturated with one fluid (such as oil, gas, or water) then the
permeability measurement is often referred to as specific or absolute permeability
•Effective Permeability:

When the rock pore spaces contain more than one fluid, then the permeability to a particular fluid is
called the effective permeability (ko, kg, or kwbeing oil, gas, or water effective permeability
respectively).
•Effective permeability is a measure of the fluid conductance capacity of a porous medium to a
particular fluid when the medium is saturated with more than one fluid.
•Relative Permeability (kr):

Defined as the ratio of the effective permeability of any phase/fluid (in presence of more than one
fluid) to the absolute permeability of that fluid at 100% saturation.
•The relative permeability of the oil, gas, and water would be:

kro= ko/k, krg= kg/k, krw =kw/k respectively

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porosity types

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Other factors affecting the volume of the reservoir rocks.

1. Grain size and pattern arrangement: Apart from the arrangement pattern of grains size
which effect rock properties, the actual size of the grains does not affects the
permeability of a neither reservoir rock nor porosity.
2. Shape of the grains: grains with high sphericity tend to pack themselves well to make a
minimum pore space, the fact which increases angularity and hence pore space volume
increases.
3. Sorting or uniformity of size of the grains: size of grains has an effect on reservoir
properties; the more uniform the grains are sized, the great proper volume of voids
spaces. Thereby mixing grains of different sizes tends to decrease total volume of void
space.
4. Subsequent action to the sediments (compaction): The more grains are compacted,
more the volume of void spaces decreases. However the compaction of sand is less
effective than the way clay does.
5. How the grains were formed.

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 I. Methods determining rock properties.

Reservoir rock properties such as porosity and permeability are directly or

indirectly measured. The direct methods consists of measuring the core sample
taken from the parallel lithological area of the reservoir rock to assess them
while the indirect methods consist of using data collection, well logs, seismic,
production tests, etc., the porosity data are used in the basic reservoir to
evaluate volumetric calculation of fluids in the reservoir and calculating fluid
saturations and geologic characterization of the reservoir

II. Reservoir rock properties calculation formula.

Porosity: ф= , Vp=VB-VS ,

Ф symbolizes porosity, Vp (volume of all pores), Vs represents volume occupied

by other particles (Matrix materials), VB represents the total volume, ƿ
represents their respective densities.
Permeability: the permeability of a reservoir reckons on the determining the
flow of a fluid which depends on constan, k , Darsey constant. With q
representing flow rate, A the area section of pores, µ represents viscosity
constant of fluid and dp/ dL represents the infinitesimal change of flowing
pressure.
q= -

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References:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273125752_Relationships_between_porosity_a
nd_permeability_for_porous_rocks/link/54fdc0700cf2c3f524254923/
reservoir engineering ahmed tareq
https://connect.spe.org/blogs/donatien-ishimwe/2014/09/29/reservoir-rock-properties
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12517-012-0760-x
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009AGUFM.H11A0789L

Complex relationship between porosity and permeability of carbonate reservoirs and its controlling

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