Direct pore-scale computation of material and transport properties for North Sea reservoir rocks

This work investigates two complex, heterogeneous sandstone lithofacies in a North Sea petroleum reservoir field. We compare samples acquired by X-ray microtomography with numerically reconstructed lithofacies, obtained from a geological process based reconstruction technique. Effective material and transport properties of these digitized rocks, such as electrical resistivity, elastic moduli, fluid permeability, and magnetic resonance (NMR), are computed. The comparison largely reveals an excellent agreement of calculated effective properties between the actual and reconstructed pore structures. A dependence of the effective properties on the specific mineralogy could be investigated in case of the reconstructed rocks. Our results allow for an interpretation of trends in effective medium properties and facilitate the construction of cross-property relations for the investigated lithofacies. The present study demonstrates the potential and feasibility of combining computer generated rocks with numerical calculations to derive material and transport properties for reservoir rocks.