Temperature dependence of the magnetic properties of reservoir rocks and minerals and implications for in situ borehole predictions of petrophysical parameters

Abstract

Recent work has shown strong correlations between magnetic susceptibility and key petrophysical parameters such as clay content and fluid permeability. The magnetic measurements in previous work were mainly undertaken at ambient (room temperature) conditions on core samples. The present study involved theoretical modeling and experimentation on the temperature dependence of the magnetic properties (mass magnetization and magnetic susceptibility) of reservoir rocks and minerals over a range of low and high applied fields. It paves the way for correctly interpreting borehole magnetic susceptibility measurements, and accurately predicting petrophysical properties in situ, from a potentially new suite of low and high field borehole magnetic tools. The temperature dependent magnetic susceptibility measurements provide an improved means of quantifying the diamagnetic versus paramagnetic mineral content in reservoir rocks compared to a single ambient measurement. Paramagnetic clays, such as illite, are important in controlling the fluid permeability in many of these samples, and we again saw correlations between the magnetic measurements, paramagnetic clay content, and permeability. We also show how to derive ferrimagnetic mineral hysteresis curves by subtracting the high field magnetic data from the total signal. The resulting magnetic hysteresis curves give important information concerning the content (often only a few ppm, which X-ray diffraction cannot detect), mineralogy, and domain state of the ferrimagnetic particles.