SPE-204271-STU

Quantifying Formation Damage Due to Drilling Through Constructing

Electro-Facies Model from WFT Data and Suite of Well Logs

Ibrahim Mabrouk, Heriot Watt University

Copyright 2020, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition originally scheduled to be held in Denver, Colorado, USA, 5 – 7
October 2020. Due to COVID-19 the physical event was postponed until 26 – 29 October 2020 and was changed to a virtual event. The official proceedings were
published online on 21 October 2020.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
of the paper have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect
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Abstract
Quantifying Formation Damage due to drilling can be of a great importance as it affects the decision whether
to perform production stimulation or not. In order to calculate formation damage, a well test is usually
performed which will require a long sequence of high cost operations that will cause a delay in the start
of production. This research aims to present a new approach through which Formation Damage can be
calculated by using permeability and pressure data acquired through wireline formation tester (WFT) along
with the conventional well logs. The approach is applied on Sitra field that is located in the Egyptian western
desert. The reservoir of interest is a middle cretaceous oil-bearing sandstone reservoir that was penetrated
by 70 wells.
The first step was building permeability model that is based on the WFT mobility data. Permeability data
points acquired along with the calculated porosity were used to divide the reservoir into different hydraulic
flow units (HFUs). Using the mud weight and the WFT pressure data, the drilling overbalance pressure is
calculated for each well and only the ones with minimum drilling overbalance were used in this step.
The next step was creating electro-facies model for the reservoir through indexed and probabilized
self-organizing map (IPSOM) using a suite of lithology-indicating well logs analysed to their principal
components then associating these electro-facies to the HFUs. Porosity-Permeability relationships were
then derived for each HFU and used to calculate continuous Permeability data curves for all of the wells in
the field per each electro-facies. This model now presents the original reservoir Permeability around each
well without being disturbed by formation damage due to the drilling process.
Difference between the model Permeability and the one calculated from the WFT, (ΔK), was then plotted
as a function of the overbalance (ΔP) and a relation between (ΔK) and (ΔP) is derived. In the depleted
wells, the permeability reduction was higher than the initial pressure wells. Using this equation, (ΔK) can
be quantified for each formation pressure with knowing the mud weight. The results were then compared
to the production data before and after performing hydraulic fracturing and the results were analysed.
Through this approach, quantitative value of the Formation Damage can be calculated without any well
tests performed which saves time and cost. Finally, a cut-off value for the formation damage that requires
production stimulation is estimated from wells history and by plotting (ΔK) as a function of (ΔP) we can
2 SPE-204271-STU

design the mud weight to keep the formation damage below this value which will eliminate the need for
stimulation since it will hugely minimize the cost of the completing the well.

Field Introduction
Sitra field is located in the Abu Gharadig Basin in the Western Desert, Egypt. The field is producing from
both upper and lower Cretaceous reservoirs. The reservoir of interest in this study is Abu Roash-E reservoir
and is characterized by local sand-bodies separated by thin limetones within thick shale sections. Abu Roash-
E was penetrated by 82 wells and only 1 core of about 27 meters was acquired. Primary petrophysical
analysis of the well logs showed that the average reservoir thickness varies between 3 to 10 meters oil-
bearing sandstone of moderate to high porosity. The reservoir development strategy was secondary recovery
by water injection to maintain the reservoir pressure above the bubble point and to enhance the sweep of the
oil from the areas away from production wells. Initial reservoir pressure was about 4500 psi at 3000 meters
depth measured by WFT which showed that the reservoir is normally pressurized. (Bapetco, 2015)

Scope of the Study

It is customary that after drilling operations are completed, a well test is performed to estimate the formation
damage (skin) which highly effects well productivity. If the formation damage value was found to be
high that it will affect the productivity of the well, it is often mitigated by applying expensive production
stimulation methods such as acidizing or hydraulic fracturing which is a good solution to this problem.
However, if the problem can be avoided from the start by controlling the formation damage that happens
while drilling, both expensive operations and lost time can be avoided.
In this research, the main focus is to find the optimum value of the formation damage that is allowed for
a certain reservoir to be produced without any requiring any production stimulation techniques. This will be
performed through a comprehensive reservoir characterization technique by integration between drilling,
production and reservoir petrophysical data. The aim is using these data to calculate the formation damage
then relate it to the amount of differential pressure used in drilling to come up with a formula to predict
the formation damage and then design the drilling program based on this value hence, eliminating the need
for production stimulation.

Work Methodology
Firstly, two different reservoir permeabilities values are calculated through integration between two
independent data sources. The first one is the initial reservoir permeability which is the permeability that is
not affected by the drilling mud invasion while the second one is the damaged zone permeability which in
this case was always lower than the reservoir initial permeability.
The first permeability is calculated through wireline formation tester (WFT) data that are least affected
by the mud invasion. In order to define the magnitude of mud invasion on the quality of the data, differential
pressure was calculated which is the difference between the pressure due to mud in the well bore, and the
formation pressure measured by WFT. Using this differential pressure data, a cut-off value is defined and
any WFT measurement that was acquired above this cut-off value is disregarded from the initial reservoir
permeability calculation. WFT data is then clustered into different Hydraulic Flow Units and porosity-
permeability transform equations are derived for each group. In order to apply these equations on log
porosity, logging data will be clustered too using a machine learning based clustering method known as
indexed and probabilized self organized map (IPSOM). The porosity-permeability transform equations are
then applied on the logs clusters and initial reservoir permeability is calculated.
For the damaged near well bore zone permeability, it is calculated from the WFT measurements that was
performed above 900 psi differential pressure. The difference between the first and the second permeabilities
SPE-204271-STU 3

represents the amount of formation damage that happened to the reservoir due to mud invasion in the drilling
operations.
The next step is to relate this permeability reduction to the amount of the differential pressure through
mathematical relationship. The final step is to estimate a recommended value for the drilling mud weight
that will yield a minimum formation damage and hence no production stimulation will be needed for this
reservoir.

Porosity Calculation
Porosity was calculated using the density log with the petrophysical parameters needed for this calculation
deduced from the routine core analysis. The first step was to calculate the grain density value by averaging
the values of the 27 core plug measurements. Figure 1 shows a histogram for the grain density measurements
distribution and a weighted average value was taken to be 2.69 gm/cc and this value was used in the porosity
calculation.

Figure 1—Core grain density histogram

The second petrophysical parameter that is needed for the porosity calculation is the density of the fluid
inside the invaded zone. Density log values were plotted against the core porosity values and a fixed point
with an X-value of zero core porosity and a Y-value of 2.69 gm/cc representing the grain density was used
to derive a linear relationship and the results are shown in Figure 2. By extrapolating the line to Y=1 which
represents 100% porosity, the value of the fluid density in the invaded zone is calculated to be 0.84 gm/cc
which is a combination between the formation oil and the Oil Based Mud "OBM" used for drilling. Since
all the wells were drilled with OBM, this value was used to calculate the porosity for the rest of the wells.
4 SPE-204271-STU

Figure 2—Core porosity vs log density readings to deduce the fluid density value

Having both the grain density and the fluid density values, the porosity can be estimated now from the
density logs easily using the equation 1:

(1)

The final step in the porosity calculation was to calibrate the results with the robust core measurements
Figure 3 shows a log plot for the cored well with both the calculated porosity represented by the blue curve
"PHIT_D" and core porosity represented by the red points "C_POR_CORR" projected on the same track.
This plot shows that the calculation for the log porosity is accepted as it matches with the measured core
porosity.

Figure 3—Log Plot showing the match between calculated log porosity and measured core porosity
SPE-204271-STU 5

Principal Component Analysis

Firstly, the logs that are to be used for classification was decided to be 4 logs which are Gamma Ray, Neutron,
Density and Compressional Slowness for two reasons. The first one is the data availability as these logs are
the most basic logs and are available for all the wells and the second reason is that these logs are known
to be the best lithology indicators. Resistivity log was not used for classification as Some wells penetrated
the reservoir in the water leg while other wells are only drilled in the oil bearing zone of the reservoir and
resistivity is known to be more fluid sensitive than lithology sensitive so it was either to separate the wells
into two groups and include the resistivity which will complicate the process of classification, or just depend
on the 4 lithology indicator logs as the basis for classification.
In order to test whether this method is to be applied or it would be better to use directly the well logging
data for creating the petrophysical classifiers, a projection circle exercise was carried out. The projection
circle is a statistical approach to project the data from well logs on a circle in the Cartesian coordinates that
will show the degree of dependency between the data.
Figure 4 shows the projection circle for the 4 main logs before performing the PCA and the results shows
that a huge dependency between some logs is noticed.

Figure 4—Projection circle for well logs showing the degree of linear dependency between the four of them

A closer look to the table which shows the degree of correlation between the well logs shows that the
dependency level is high with Density correlates by 38% with Neutron and by 67% with Gamma Ray, while
the later correlates by 56% with Neutron. This huge dependency between the well logs will result in the
reduction of the information that will be used for the classification in the next step and will make the process
more difficult. When it comes to projecting the Principal Components of these logs, it can be noticed that
the dependency level is hugely reduced reaching a maximum of 12% and this will ease the classification
process leading to a more accurate prediction of Petrophysical Classifiers. Figure 5 shows the projection
circle for the 4 Principal Components for the derived from the 4 lithology indicator logs.
6 SPE-204271-STU

Figure 5—Projection circle for principal components for the well logs
showing the degree by which the linear dependency was reduced

Indexed and Probabilized Self Organized Map [IPSOM] for Clustering

There are various approaches to classify the well logs and create the electro-facies. In this research the one
used is known as (IPSOM) which is a short for Indexed and Probabilized Self-Organizing Map. IPSOM is
a Techlog module that provides automatic classification methods with both supervised and unsupervised
modes based on machine learning analysis. There are two methods for grouping using the IPSOM, the first
one is the unsupervised method, which uses nothing but the information from well logs or in this case the
Principal Components (PC) while the second one is the supervised learning in which the well logs or the PC
are classified based on an independent classification source which can be core derived facies or image log
derived facies. The first type of classification is used in this step as the second type requires the presence of
core or image data that covers all the different reservoir facies and since this is not the case due to limited
available data, the first type is preferred.
The resulted principal components from section 3.2 were used as the input for the model learning with
using the Hierarchical Clustering. The data was then clustered and group into four main rock types (RT).
Figure 6 shows the Self Organized Map (SOM) resulted in from clustering the data. Each background color
represents a different RT that exists in the reservoir.
SPE-204271-STU 7

Figure 6—Self Organized Map (SOM) as a result of clustering the principal components data

Petrophysical Classifiers
For this classification, PC were used but when it comes to visualizing and interpreting the results, the actual
well logs were used to do so. Each RT will be discussed separately using spectrum plot which is a way to
visualize the well logs together and for this interpretation four main well logs will be used which are GR,
NEU, DEN and PEF. Figure 7 shows the Spectrum Plot for RT-1.

Figure 7—Spectrum plot showing the four well logs readings range for RT-1

For RT-1, the Density log reading is the highest when comparing to other rock types meaning it has the
highest bulk density while the GR reading is lowest which can be interpreted as the lowest shale content.
Looking at the PEF readings as well, it can be higher than the normal sand stone range which means the
presence of calcareous material acting as cement and lowering the reservoir porosity which can be verified
by both the low NEU values and the high DEN values. Hence, this RT is the lowest RT quality encountered
in this reservoir. Moving on to Figure 8 which shows the Spectrum Plot for RT-2.
8 SPE-204271-STU

Figure 8—Spectrum plot showing the four well logs readings range for RT-2

Despite the fact that GR readings for RT-2 is higher than that for RT-1, it can be noticed that both PEF
and DEN values are getting lower which means the problem of the presence of calcareous cement that had
a major effect on the reservoir porosity is reduced in RT-2. This can be further verified by looking at the
NEU readings which has almost doubled when compared to RT-1. This increase in the NEU porosity can
be interpreted as a combination of two reasons, the increase in the shale volume in this RT and the increase
of the reservoir porosity. RT-2 can be considered a higher quality reservoir than RT-1 but still it is a poor-
quality reservoir in general.
RT-3 is represented by Figure 9 which shows a drop in PEF readings meaning that the calcareous cement
is becoming less in this RT which can be further backed up by the lower DEN readings. When it comes to
GR readings, it decreases as well representing lower shale volume than RT-2. The NEU porosity reading
is increasing which in this case translates to an increase in the reservoir porosity. When comparing both
GR and NEU values for RT-2 and RT-3, it is noticed that RT-3 has higher NEU and lower GR than RT-2
meaning that the amount of the shale porosity in RT-3 is less RT-2 making the effective porosity of RT-3
higher. This makes RT-3 to be considered as a good reservoir quality rock.

Figure 9—Spectrum plot showing the four well logs readings range for RT-3

For the last rock type under investigation which is RT-4, the Spectrum Plot is shown in Figure 10. This
rock type has the lowest DEN and PEF readings ever noticed in this reservoir meaning it has the lowest
calcareous cement material present. It also has a low GR reading which interprets as the lowest shale content
despite the fact that the NEU readings are increasing. Combining all these sources of information, RT-4 can
be easily interpreted as the best reservoir quality in the reservoir.
SPE-204271-STU 9

Figure 10—Spectrum plot showing the four well logs readings range for RT-4

In conclusion, Abu Roash-E reservoir is classified based on the well logs into four rock types, RT-1,
RT-2, RT-3 and RT-4 with the first one being the lowest reservoir quality and the last one being the highest.

WFT Data for Permeability

An independent source of data that does not correlate to well logs was used in the reservoir characterization
in order to devide the reservoir into different classes each corresponds to different quality. This was done
using the Amaefule work in the rock typing but with one major difference. In Amaefule calculations
for the Reservoir Quality Index (RQI) and Flow Zone Indicator (FZI), both porosity and permeability
measurements in Routine Core Analysis (RCA) are used but in this research, the core permeability and
porosity were replaced by the WFT permeability and log porosity correspondingly.
The decision to use the WFT data rather than the core data was based on two major reasons. The first
was the data availability as there is only one core acquired in this reservoir with 27 valid plugs acting as a
single data point across the whole filed which will cause bias the calculations to only represent the facies
distribution in one well. On the other hand, WFT data was acquired in almost all of the wells which gives far
greater representation of the reservoir heterogeneity. Not to mention number of WFT valid data measured
was 83 samples which is almost triple the core plugs number. As a result of having more data points and
the way these data points are distributed in the field, WFT data is far more representative than the core data
for a large-scale work.
The second reason why WFT can serve the purpose of the study more than the core data is the nature of
how data is acquired in both methods. WFT represents the in-situ fluid flow conditions in the reservoir with
the actual reservoir fluids while the core measurements are taken in different stress conditions and using
different fluids than the reservoir fluids which makes long correlations and conversions needed to make the
core data more representative to the reservoir conditions.
After demonstrating the reasons why WFT data will be used in the rock typing step rather than the core
data, the next step was to examine the sources of error in the available WFT data. It is widely acknowledged
that one major source of permeability alteration around the well-bore is due to the drilling mud invasion.
The amount of invasion that happens in the reservoir is highly dependent on different parameters and the
most important of them are; reservoir permeability, exposure time to the mud, pressure difference between
the mud column and reservoir pressure which will be referred to in this study as the differential pressure
and finally the nature of the mud itself and how it reacts to the formation.
Since all of WFT logging has to be in open hole directly after drilling the well section, the exposure time
to the drilling mud in all of the data is almost the same, therefore the effect of different exposure time on
the measured WFT points in different wells is neglected. All of the wells in this study were drilled using
Oil Base Mud (OBM) with the same characteristics which resulted in the minimum interaction between the
10 SPE-204271-STU

mud and the clays in the formation and hence, this factor can be neglected as well. The last two factors in
this case has the most effect on the amount of invasion which translates to the amount of near well-bore
reservoir permeability alteration and they will be examined in more detail.

Differential Pressure Calculation

Differential pressure in this study is the pressure difference between the pressure value in the well-bore,
which is the pressure due to the mud hydrostatic column, and the reservoir pressure. WFT tool provides
an easy way to calculate this differential pressure as the main target of the tool is to measure the reservoir
pressure. Also, before this measurement is made, the tool pressure gauge is exposed to mud pressure so
it also records it. Through having these two pressure values, a simple subtraction can result in the desired
pressure. This step is performed for all the 83 data points in the study and in order to better visualize the
result, the histogram in Figure 11, the distribution of the differential pressure values is presented.

Figure 11—Differential pressure histogram showing the range of

differential pressure under which WFT measurements are performed

While drilling the reservoir section in these wells, differential pressure values ranged between 250 psi and
4200 psi which will make a huge difference on the WFT permeabilities recorded in this range. The lower
the differential pressure, the less the mud invasion into the formation and hence the less the permeability
reduction around the well-bore which means that the WFT permeability measurement will be most accurate
in the wells affected by the less differential pressure. On the other hand, the wells that were exposed to
higher differential pressure, the WFT permeabilities cannot be trusted as the amount of mud invasion will
hugely reduce the reservoir permeability and the measured WFT permeability will always under-estimate
the initial reservoir permeability.
In order to overcome this issue, only the WFT data that were acquired below a certain differential pressure
value will be used to calculate the initial reservoir permeability as these data will be the closest to the true
permeability values.

Rock Typing and Porosity-Permeability Transforms

Log porosity values were plotted against WFT permeability values in a porosity-permeability cross plot
with 83 sample points as presented in Figure 12.
SPE-204271-STU 11

Figure 12—Calculated log porosity vs measured WFT permeability cross plot for all WFT measurements

From Figure 12, it can be noticed that a single regression line cannot be fitted through all the data and
represent a single relationship between the reservoir porosity and permeability and this can be due to one
of two reasons, either the permeability data is affected by the formation damage due to the drilling mud, or
the reservoir has different Hydraulic Flow Units (HFUs). Hence, the data is filtered to exclude the points
affected most by the formation damage. A differential pressure cut-off value of 900 psi is used for filtering
the data points meaning that any point that was acquired in a condition where the differential pressure is
above 900 psi will not be used. Figure 13 shows the same cross plot after applying the 900 psi differential
pressure filter and the scattered data can still be noticed which now confirms that the reservoir has different
HFUs.

Figure 13—Calculated log porosity vs measured WFT permeability

cross plot after applying the 900 psi differential pressure cut-off

A rock typing workflow is now performed through using Amaefule equations where firstly the Reservoir
Quality Index (RQI) is calculated through using the equation 2

(2)

where k is the WFT permeability and ϕ is the calculated reservoir porosity from the density log. The next
step is to normalize the reservoir porosity through calculating the normalized porosity ϕz from equation 3
12 SPE-204271-STU

(3)

The final calculation step was to calculate the Flow Zone Indicator (FZI) through using both RQI and
ϕz values in the equation 4
(4)
The resulted FZI values are then clustered into four main HFUs based on visualization of the FZI
histogram. Figure 14 shows the resulted FZI histogram after coloring each cluster with different color.

Figure 14—Flow Zone Indicator (FZI) Histogram used for clustering the data into four different Hydraulic Flow Units (HFUs)

Histogram clustering is the most basic clustering approach for rock typing and it was preferred to follow
it first and examine the results before trying more complicated approaches for FZI values clustering. The
way to examine this clustering method was to use these results into grouping the data on Figure 13 and see
if a good result for a porosity-permeability correlation can be established. Figure 15 shows the exact data
that was shown earlier on Figure 13 but now they were coloured according to their FZI cluster.

Figure 15—Calculated log porosity vs measured WFT permeability cross plot after applying the
900 psi differential pressure cut-off and coloring the groups based on the FZI histogram clustering

Four porosity-permeability regression lines were established with each one representing a different
reservoir HFU. In order to quantify these correlations, Table 1 shows the regression equations and the
coefficient of determination for each one of these equations. An R2 range of 71% to 89% was considered
acceptable and hence no more complicated work on the FZI clustering was needed.
SPE-204271-STU 13

Table 1—Porosity Permeability transform equations for different HFUs and their coefficient of determination

HFU PORO-PERM Transform Coefficient of Determination [R^2]

HFU-1 Log(K)=4.77*Log(Φ)+4.16 0.71

HFU-2 Log(K)=3.28*Log(Φ)+3.56 0.74

HFU-3 Log(K)=4.22*Log(Φ)+4.99 0.8

HFU-4 Log(K)=3.2*Log(Φ)+4.69 0.89

These four equations now represent an easy way to calculate the initial reservoir permeability using
nothing but the porosity data. However, in order to do so, we have to establish a correlation between these
HFUs and the reservoir rock types established in the Petrophysical Classifiers section. It can be safe to
assume that the highest quality HFU and RT will have a higher permeability value for the same porosity
value and hence, these correlations can be easily applied on all of the wells giving continuous permeability
values that are least affected by mud invasion.

Initial Reservoir Permeability Calculation

Initial reservoir permeability can now be calculated for all of the wells both the least and the most affected
by permeability reduction due to mud invasion using the equations presented in Table 1. By applying the
porosity-permeability transform for HFU-1 to the porosity data from RT-1, HFU-2 to the porosity data from
RT-2, HFU-3 to the porosity data from RT-3 and HFU-4 to the porosity data from RT-4 then merging all
these data together, we now have a continuous permeability value curve for all of the wells. The next step
would be to verify the degree of accuracy for the permeability calculation by an independent source that was
not used in the calculations which is the core measurements. Figure 16 shows a cross plot shown in with
the red line represents the x=y line where a good degree of match between the calculated permeability and
core permeability has been obtained assuring the accuracy of the followed method to calculate the initial
reservoir permeability.

Figure 16—Cross plot showing the match between the calculated log permeability and the measured core permeability

Permeability Reduction Calculation

The target from this step is to calculate how much reduction in the reservoir permeability from formation
damage due to drilling mud. Firstly, the WFT permeability is visualized against the calculated initial
reservoir permeability in Figure 17. On the X-axis the calculated initial reservoir permeability is plotted
while on the Y-axis, the measured WFT permeability for more than 900 psi is plotted.
14 SPE-204271-STU

Figure 17—Calculated initial reservoir permeability vs WFT measured reservoir permeability

It can be noticed that the measured permeability in high differential pressure environment is always
underestimated from the initial reservoir permeability and that is due to formation damage that is caused
by the mud invasion. The amount of this permeability reduction as a percentage of the initial reservoir
permeability can be calculated through introducing equation 5
(5)
where Δk is the permeability reduction due to formation damage, ks is the permeability of the damaged
zone which is measured by the WFT and k is the calculated original reservoir permeability.
Using the equation 5, the permeability reduction is calculated and plotted against the differential pressure
which was previously calculated. Figure 18 shows a cross plot where on the X-axis is the differential pressure
while on the Y-axis is the permeability reduction as a percentage of the initial reservoir permeability.

Figure 18—Permeability reduction due to formation damage vs differential pressure

A logarithmic relationship can be derived by creating the logarithmic regression on the plot and it is
noticed that the coefficient of determination for the equation is 96%. Points that were measured under a small
differential pressure less than 500 psi showed a minor reduction in the permeability ranged between 3% to
SPE-204271-STU 15

20% and with the increase of the differential pressure due to either depleting the reservoir with production
or increasing the drilling mud weight will cause a huge reduction in the permeability around the well-bore
which goes to more than 70%. To produce the wells that were exposed to high differential pressure hence had
severe permeability reduction, production stimulation is a necessity. Magnitude of Permeability Reduction
can be related to the amount of Differential Pressure applied while drilling through equation 6
(6)
This equation can be used now to calculate the differential pressure desired that will yield the minimum
formation damage assuring that no stimulation techniques are needed to overcome the damaged zone
around the well-bore. In order to come up with a cut-off value for the maximum permeability reduction
that is allowed in this reservoir which will not require any stimulation to be performed, production data
from 13 wells were examined. These wells were perforated and produced then the production rates were
unsatisfactory so hydraulic fracturing was performed in order to enhance the wells productivity.
After the hydraulic fracturing, the production rates were tested again. To visualize the relationship
between the rate increase due to the frac job and the formation damage, permeability reduction was plotted
on the X-axis versus the times the production rate increased after the frac on Figure 19. By examining Figure
19, wells that had permeability reduction of less than 20% the hydraulic fracturing effect was not high as
it increased the production rate by only 50% before the frac while for wells that had higher permeability
reduction, the frac doubled and tripled the production rates for these wells.

Figure 19—Formation damage due to mud invasion vs production rate increase after hydraulic fracturing

Using Figure 19, a permeability reduction value of less than 20% will always be desired in the future
wells targeting this reservoir and this will correspond to a differential pressure value of 500 psi or less while
drilling the reservoir section in these wells.

Conclusion and Recommendations

The main target for this research is to establish a mathematical relationship between the amount of
permeability reduction that results from the drilling operations and the amount of differential pressure used
while drilling the reservoir section. In order to do that, an integration between two data sources was used to
obtain two permeabilities values, the first one was the initial reservoir permeability which is the permeability
that was not affected by the drilling mud invasion while the second one was the damaged zone permeability
which in this case was always lower than the reservoir initial permeability. The difference between these
16 SPE-204271-STU

two permeabilities was calculated and then divided by the original permeability to get the percentage of
permeability reduction due to formation damage. A mathematical relationship was derived between the
formation damage and the the mud pressure overbalance used in drilling and using this relationship with the
data from the production wells, a proper mud weight that will yield the maximum allowable overbalance
pressure was calculated to avoid any need for stimulation techniques because of the formation damage.
It is necessary to mention that this study is an empirical one performed on a sand stone oil bearing
reservoir and it would be invalid to apply the results on any different reservoir due to differences in the clay
content, mud type used in drilling, fluid type inside the reservoir and many different reasons. On the other
hand, the same workflow can be followed for other reservoirs to come up with specific results that will be
of a better representation for these specific reservoirs.

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