FORMATION EVALUATION IN HIGHLY-DEVIATED, LONG REACH DEVELOPMENT WELLS ON THE NORTH RANKIN GAS FIELD, NW SHELF, AUSTRALIA

Abstract

A large proportion of the North West Shelf development gas wells are long reach (greater than 3500 m) and highly deviated. For reservoir description and management purposes, comprehensive formation evaluation needs to be carried out in these wells.

Considerable difficulties have been encountered with electric log data acquisition due to friction and borehole conditions in these long, highly-deviated wells. As a result, new techniques to log the zones of interest were introduced. A system using the drill pipe to transport the downhole logging tools has been successfully used.

Also, low-toxicity oil-based mud (LTM) was introduced in order to ease drilling problems and borehole conditions. However, owing to the non-conductive nature of the oil-based drilling fluid, improvements were required in the vertical resolution of the resistivity measurements and the estimation of the formation porosity.

A computer program using a forward deconvolution technique recently developed by Shell's research laboratory in Holland has been successfully applied to enhance the vertical resolution of the resistivity log reading.

The large range of uncertainty on the pore volume has been reduced to reasonable level by calibrating the porosity log data against core data obtained in a well drilled with LTM.