November 2011

On Monday 7th of November at 4.30PM come along to see Colette Couves present:

Porosity and Permeability Development within Unconventional Igneous Reservoirs

Venue: The PG lounge

Abstract:

Volcanic rocks are becoming increasingly recognized as viable petroleum reservoirs, with recent discoveries including the Miocene Minami-Nagaoka gas field in the Niigata basin, Japan, the Early Tertiary Padra oil field in India, and various Jurassic fields within the Austral basin of southern Argentina. Reservoir quality in these sequences is primarily controlled by porosity and permeability, which can be evaluated petrophysically through laboratory based measurements. Although porosities can commonly be relatively high in such rocks the permeabilities are often very low making it difficult to extract the hydrocarbons. The porosity/permeability characteristics can be modified by a number of secondary processes including fracturing due to tectonism and/or alteration due to metamorphism, meteoric or hydrothermal alteration.

X-Ray Computed Tomography is currently being evaluated as a potential tool to help more fully understand the controls on porosity-permeability development in a suite of variably altered Cretaceous volcanic rocks from South America. Basalts, andesites and rhyolites have been investigated to produce a qualitative visualization of the 3D pore structure, and a quantitative estimate of porosity. Integrating these high-resolution porosity maps with the results from more routine petrographical evaluation has permitted the evolution and nature of porosity development in these volcanic rocks to be better understood. Moreover, these porosity values can be compared with the results obtained from traditional petrophysical analysis so as to assess the potential industrial application of this new technique.


On MONDAY 28TH OF NOVEMBER come along to see Anna Sturrock present:

Finding Nemo: Using data storage tags to validate otolith chemistry as an indicator of plaice movements and connectivity