Publications

This paper will discuss saturation modelling weighted by area-depth and to determine a field’s hydrocarbon in place, it is necessary to model the distribution of hydrocarbon and water throughout the reservoir. Results comparison to “average” saturation values obtained from reservoir summation are also described to improve the prospect evaluation. The unconventional approach of water saturation determined using SHF weighted to volume is in the appreciation of 3D earth model, applicating the distribution of saturation 360-degree geometry, and addressing the reservoir heterogeneity. The common saturation values are obtained from reservoir summation with applied petrophysical cut-off. The workflow to estimate the potential resources of an exploration opportunity usually begins with a geophysicist interpreting seismic. Then, a geologist constructs a geological model with which to calculate hydrocarbon in place. As petrophysical data tends to be sparse in most new venture areas, petrophysicists are seldom called on to help in the process. This omission leads to major errors in the prospect evaluation. The problem stems from lack of communication and understanding between the various disciplines contributing to the various parts of the workflow. The SHF greatly impacts resource calculations and is used by geologists to predict the saturation in the reservoir for a given height above the free water level. Many bad practices occur in the initial setting up of Monte Carlo simulation model of hydrocarbon-in-place. For example, failure to consider the petrophysical model leads to incorrect distributions of the input parameters, neglecting to link dependent petrophysical parameters, and using “average” saturation values and ignoring height dependency.