THE INFLUENCE OF SHALE EFFECTS UPON THE ELECTRICAL RESISTIVITY OF RESERVOIR ROCKS

The roots of the so-called shaly-sand problem in hydrocarbon evaluation lie in the effect of relatively fine-grained minerals upon measured electrical parameters of granular reservoirs. This influence manifests itself as an excess conductivity, over and above that due to the purely geometric effects of electrolyte distribution within the pore space. For formations with low shaliness, this excess conductivity is usually insignificant in typical oilfield situations. The influence of shaliness upon observed values of formation resistivity has been appraised by collating core-sample data from four different reservoirs. It has been demonstrated that during the course of electrical measurement under conditions of full electrolyte saturation, any given lithology can exhibit both negligible and highly significant shale effects depending upon the resistivity of the interstitial aqueous electrolyte. The effects of shaliness are also governed by the degree of water saturation. Because the manifestation of shaliness in electrical data is not a function of lithology alone, recourse is made to a more realistic concept of shale effects whereby a formation, or section of a formation, is classified as “effectively clean” or “effectively shaly” according to whether it obeys or defies, respectively, the fundamental empirical laws of Archie (1942). In particular, since an intrinsic formation factor can be obtained directly in fully-saturated effectively clean reservoirs, whereas only an apparent quantity may be recorded directly in fully-saturated effectively shaly reservoirs, the ratio of apparent to intrinsic formation factor serves as a useful conceptual indicator of shale effects, attaining the limiting value of unity only under effectively clean conditions. In the context of electrical measurement the terms “shaliness” and “shale effects” are evidently not synonymous and it is the latter which should be considered when selecting equations for the computation of water saturation. The implications for well-log analysis follow through formulated guidelines that describe the relative levels of shale effects in different zones of lithologically uniform reservoirs.