Quantifying Gas Saturation with Pulsed Neutron Logging—An Innovative Approach

Abstract

Abstract In reservoir surveillance, gas saturation is routinely monitored both in gas reservoirs for reservoir performance and in saturated oil reservoirs to prevent gas coning or to optimize infill drilling well placement. This paper presents a new pulsed neutron technology and method that enable the quantitative monitoring of the gas saturation variations to address these reservoir management issues. One of the key features of the newly designed pulsed neutron tool is the new type of Lanthanum Bromide (LaBr3) detectors. The extra-long spacing of the far detectors provides a larger volume of investigation that is more representative of the actual reservoir condition. The quantitative aspect of the measurement is achieved by using the ratios of the detector counts, so that the rock matrix effects are diminished, as opposed to the traditional sigma measurement, which can be influenced significantly by the rock matrix properties. This new tool and data interpretation methodology have been tested in both clastic and carbonate reservoirs with encouraging results. This paper presents an overview of the technology and some field application examples.