Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Petrophysics
Summary
Petrophysics (from the Greek πέτρα, petra, "rock" and φύσις, physis, "nature") is the study of physical and chemical rock properties and their interactions with fluids.
A major application of petrophysics is in studying reservoirs for the hydrocarbon industry. Petrophysicists work together with reservoir engineers and geoscientists to understand the porous media properties of the reservoir. Particularly how the pores are interconnected in the subsurface, controlling the accumulation and migration of hydrocarbons. Some fundamental petrophysical properties determined are lithology, porosity, water saturation, permeability, and capillary pressure.
The petrophysicists workflow measures and evaluates these petrophysical properties through well-log interpretation (i.e. in-situ reservoir conditions) and core analysis in the laboratory. During well perforation, different well-log tools are used to measure the petrophysical and mineralogical properties through radioactivity and seismic technologies in the borehole. In addition, core plugs are taken from the well as sidewall core or whole core samples. These studies are combined with geological, geophysical, and reservoir engineering studies to model the reservoir and determine its economic feasibility.
While most petrophysicists work in the hydrocarbon industry, some also work in the mining, water resources, geothermal energy, and carbon capture and storage industries. Petrophysics is part of the geosciences, and its studies are used by petroleum engineering, geology, geochemistry, exploration geophysics and others.
The following are the fundamental petrophysical properties used to characterize a reservoir:
Lithology: A description of the rock's physical characteristics, such as grain size, composition and texture. By studying the lithology of local geological outcrops and core samples, geoscientists can use a combination of log measurements, such as natural gamma, neutron, density and resistivity, to determine the lithology down the well.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.