Development of Rock Compressibility Relationships for Middle Eastern Carbonate and Sandstone Reservoirs

Abstract

Abstract Rock compressibility is an important physical property of reservoir rocks, which is required for many reservoir engineering and geomechanics calculations. In case of unavailability of lab measurements, empirical correlations are used by the industry. This work is aimed to provide new relationships of rock compressibility versus porosity based on measured compressibility data for carbonate and sandstone formations for the Middle East. Laboratory results were compared with several empirical correlations from the literature. Comparisons were made using statistical parameters and error functions. In order to find suitable compressibility relationships, coefficients for the following existing correlations were modified: Hall (1953), Newman (1973) and Horne (1990). Final relationships demonstrated optimal fitting based on error statistics. New rock compressibility correlations were derived for both, limestone and sandstone. Results show that measured data for carbonates showed rather good agreement with tested literature correlations. However, measured data for sandstones showed poor agreement with literature correlations. The optimized Horne correlation gave the best match with measured data, with R2 = 0.692, and the minimum MSE. The optimized Horne correlation for sandstones also gave the best match with measured data, R2 = 0.726, and the minimum MSE. However, from a statistical significance point of view any of the tested industry correlations may be successfully tuned to the measured data.