Resistivity logging represents the cornerstone of modern petroleum exploration, providing a quantitative assessment of hydrocarbon bearing potential in newly discovered oilfields. Resistivity is measured using AC coil tools, as well as by focused DC laterolog and micro-pad devices, and later extrapolated, to provide oil saturation estimates related to economic productivity and cash flow. Interpretation and modeling methods, highly lucrative, are shrouded in secrecy by oil service companies – often these models are incorrect and mistakes perpetuate themselves over time. This book develops math modeling methods for layered, anisotropic media, providing algorithms, validations and numerous examples. New electric current tracing tools are also constructed which show how well (or poorly) DC tools probe intended anisotropic formations at different dip angles. The approaches discussed provide readers with new insights into the limitations of conventional tools and methods, and offer practical and rigorous solutions to several classes of problems explored in the book. Traditionally, Archie’s law is used to relate resistivity to water saturation, but only on small core-sample spatial scales. The second half of this book introduces methods to calculate field-wide water saturations using modern Darcy flow approaches, and then, via Archie’s law, develops field-wide resistivity distributions which may vary with time. How large-scale resistivity distributions can be used in more accurate tool interpretation and reservoir characterization is considered at length. The book also develops new methods in “time lapse logging,” where timewise changes to resistivity response (arising from fluid movements) can be used to predict rock and fluid flow properties.
Real-world reservoirs are layered, heterogeneous and anisotropic, exposed to water and gas drives, faults, barriers and fractures. They are produced by systems of vertical, deviated, horizontal and multilateral wells whose locations, sizes, shapes and topologies are dictated «on the fly, at random»by petroleum engineers and drillers at well sites. Wells may be pressure or rate-constrained, with these roles re-assigned during simulation with older laterals shut-in, newer wells drilled and brought on stream, and so on. And all are subject to steady and transient production, each satisfying different physical and mathematical laws, making reservoir simulation an art difficult to master and introducing numerous barriers to entry. All of these important processes can now be simulated in any order using rapid, stable and accurate computational models developed over two decades. And what if it were further possible to sketch complicated geologies and lithologies, plus equally complex systems of general wells, layer-by-layer using Windows Notepad? And with no prior reservoir simulation experience and only passing exposure to reservoir engineering principles? Have the user press «Simulate,» and literally, within minutes, produce complicated field-wide results, production forecasts, and detailed three-dimensional color pressure plots from integrated graphics algorithms? Developed over years of research, this possibility has become reality. The author, an M.I.T. trained scientist who has authored fifteen original research books, over a hundred papers and forty patents, winner of a prestigious British Petroleum Chairman's Innovation Award in reservoir engineering and a record five awards from the United States Department of Energy, has delivered just such a product, making real-time planning at the well-site simple and practical. Workflows developed from experience as a practicing reservoir engineer are incorporated into «intelligent menus» that make in-depth understanding of simulation principles and readings of user manuals unnecessary. This volume describes new technology for down-to-earth problems using numerous examples performed with our state-of-the-art simulator, one that is available separately at affordable cost and requiring only simple Intel Core i5 computers without specialized graphics boards. The new methods are rigorous, validated and well-documented and are now available for broad petroleum industry application.
Wilson C. Chin has written some of the most important and well-known books in the petroleum industry. These books, whose research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and several international petroleum corporations, have set very high standards. Many algorithms are used at leading oil service companies to support key drilling and well logging applications. For the first time, the physical models in these publications, founded on rigorous mathematics and numerical methods, are now available to the broader industry: students, petroleum engineers, drillers and faculty researchers. The presentations are written in easy-to-understand language, with few equations, offering simplified explanations of difficult problems and solutions which provide key insights into downhole physical phenomena through detailed tabulations and color graphics displays. Practical applications, such as cuttings transport, pressure control, mudcake integrity, formation effects in unconventional applications, and so on, are addressed in great detail, offering the most practical answers to everyday problems that the engineer encounters. The book does not stop at annular flow. In fact, the important role of mudcake growth and thickness in enabling steady flow in the annulus is considered, as is the role of (low) formation permeability in affecting mud filtration, cake growth, and fluid sealing at the sandface. This is the first publication addressing “the big picture,” a “first” drawn from the author’s related research in multiple disciplines such as drilling rheology, formation testing and reservoir simulation. A must-have for any petroleum engineer, petroleum professional, or student, this book is truly a groundbreaking volume that is sure to set new standards for the industry.
Almost all publications on borehole electromagnetics deal with idealizations that are not acceptable physically, and unfortunately, even these models are company proprietary. On the other hand, “exact models” are only available through detailed finite element or finite difference analysis, and more often than not, simply describe case studies for special applications. In either case, the models are not available for general use and the value of the publications is questionable. This new approach provides a rigorous, fully three-dimensional solution to the general problem, developed over almost two decades by a researcher familiar with practical applications and mathematical modeling. Completely validated against exact solutions and physics-based checks through over a hundred documented examples, the self-contained model (with special built-in matrix solvers and iteration algorithms) with a “plain English graphical user interface” has been optimized to run extremely fast – seconds per run as opposed to minutes and hours – and then automatically presents all electric and magnetic field results through integrated three-dimensional color graphics. In addition to state-of-the-art algorithms, basic “utility programs” are also developed, such as simple dipole methods, Biot-Savart large diameter models, nonlinear phase and amplitude interpolation algorithms, and so on. Incredibly useful to oilfield practitioners, this volume is a must-have for serious professionals in the field, and all the algorithms have undergone a laborious validation process with real use in the field.
Trade magazines and review articles describe MWD in casual terms, e.g., positive versus negative pulsers, continuous wave systems, drilling channel noise and attenuation, in very simple terms absent of technical rigor. However, few truly scientific discussions are available on existing methods, let alone the advances necessary for high-data-rate telemetry. Without a strong foundation building on solid acoustic principles, rigorous mathematics, and of course, fast, inexpensive and efficient testing of mechanical designs, low data rates will impose unacceptable quality issues to real-time formation evaluation for years to come. This all-new revised second edition of an instant classic promises to change all of this. The lead author and M.I.T.-educated scientist, Wilson Chin, has written the only book available that develops mud pulse telemetry from first principles, adapting sound acoustic principles to rigorous signal processing and efficient wind tunnel testing. In fact, the methods and telemetry principles developed in the book were recently adopted by one of the world’s largest industrial corporations in its mission to redefine the face of MWD. The entire engineering history for continuous wave telemetry is covered: anecdotal stories and their fallacies, original hardware problems and their solutions, different noise mechanisms and their signal processing solutions, apparent paradoxes encountered in field tests and simple explanations to complicated questions, and so on, are discussed in complete “tell all” detail for students, research professors and professional engineers alike. These include signal processing algorithms, signal enhancement methods, and highly efficient “short” and “long wind tunnel” test methods, whose results can be dynamically re-scaled to real muds flowing at any speed. A must read for all petroleum engineering professionals!
Wave propagation is central to all areas of petroleum engineering, e.g., drilling vibrations, MWD mud pulse telemetry, swab-surge, geophysical ray tracing, ocean and current interactions, electromagnetic wave and sonic applications in the borehole, but rarely treated rigorously or described in truly scientific terms, even for a single discipline. Wilson Chin, an MIT and Caltech educated scientist who has consulted internationally, provides an integrated, comprehensive, yet readable exposition covering all of the cited topics, offering insights, algorithms and validated methods never before published. A must on every petroleum engineering bookshelf! In particular, the book: Delivers drillstring vibrations models coupling axial, torsional and lateral motions that predict rate-of-penetration, bit bounce and stick-slip as they depend on rock-bit interaction and bottomhole assembly properties, Explains why catastrophic lateral vibrations at the neutral point cannot be observed from the surface even in vertical wells, but providing a proven method to avoid them, Demonstrates why Fermat's «principle of least time» (used in geophysics) applies to non-dissipative media only, but using the «kinematic wave theory» developed at MIT, derives powerful methods applicable to general attenuative inhomogeneous media, Develops new approaches to mud acoustics and applying them to MWD telemetry modeling and strong transients in modern swab-surge applicagtions, Derives new algorithms for borehole geophysics interpretation, e.g., Rh and Rv in electromagnetic wave and permeability in Stoneley waveform analysis, and Outlines many more applications, e.g., wave loadings on offshore platforms, classical problems in wave propagation, and extensions to modern kinematic wave theory. These disciplines, important to all field-oriented activities, are not treated as finite element applications that are simply gridded, «number-crunched» and displayed, but as scientific disciplines deserving of clear explanation. General results are carefully motivated, derived and applied to real-world problems, with results demonstrating the importance and predictive capabilities of the new methods.
Almost all publications on borehole electromagnetics deal with idealizations that are not acceptable physically, and unfortunately, even these models are company proprietary. On the other hand, “exact models” are only available through detailed finite element or finite difference analysis, and more often than not, simply describe case studies for special applications. In either case, the models are not available for general use and the value of the publications is questionable. This new approach provides a rigorous, fully three-dimensional solution to the general problem, developed over almost two decades by a researcher familiar with practical applications and mathematical modeling. Completely validated against exact solutions and physics-based checks through over a hundred documented examples, the self-contained model (with special built-in matrix solvers and iteration algorithms) with a “plain English graphical user interface” has been optimized to run extremely fast – seconds per run as opposed to minutes and hours – and then automatically presents all electric and magnetic field results through integrated three-dimensional color graphics. In addition to state-of-the-art algorithms, basic “utility programs” are also developed, such as simple dipole methods, Biot-Savart large diameter models, nonlinear phase and amplitude interpolation algorithms, and so on. Incredibly useful to oilfield practitioners, this volume is a must-have for serious professionals in the field, and all the algorithms have undergone a laborious validation process with real use in the field.