Reservoir Rock

For a rock to act as a reservoir, it must possess two essential properties: it

must have pores to contain the oil or gas, and the pores must be connected to allow
the movement of fluids; the rock must have permeability.

Porosity
Porosity is a property that tells how porous a rock is. Its used to measure the
capacity of reservoir to contains fluids.

The total porosity is separated into effective and ineffective pores.

Effective pores:
Catenary pore are the pores open to more than one throat passage which
hydrocarbons can be flushed out by natural or artificial water drive.
Cul-de-sac pores open to one throat passage, or called dead-end. They are
unaffected by flushing, but as pressure drops, oil and gas expand and come out of

the pores.
Ineffective pore:
Closed pores have no connection with other pores and are unable to yield
hydrocarbons.

Porosity = open space in a rock/total rock volume(solid+space)

Ex. a sandstone with 8% porosity = 92% solid rock and 8% is open space
containing oil, gas, or water
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Permeability
Permeability is the ability of fluids to pass through a porous material.
Ex. If it takes a lot of pressure to squeeze fluid through a rock, that rock has low
permeability.
Permeability in petroleum-producing rocks is usually expressed in units called
millidarcys. Oil and gas are usually from rocks that have ten to several hundred
millidarcys.
The Darcys law
Capillary Pressure
Capillarity is a phenomenon where liquid is drawn up in a tube with the
difference between the ambient pressure and the pressure exerted by the column of
liquid.
Capillary pressure increases with decreasing tube diameter. In geological
term, the reservoir pressure increases with decreasing pore size, or pore throat
diameter. The capillary pressure is also related with the liquids surface tension.

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Relationship between Porosity, Permeability and

Grain shape
Two grain shapes to consider are roundness and sphericity.
Porosity decreases with sphericity because spherical grains may be more
tightly packed than subspherical ones.
Grain size
 Coarser sands sometimes have higher porosities than finer sands.
Permeability declines with decreasing grain size because pore diameter
decreases, so capillary pressure increases.
Grain sorting
Porosity and permeability increase with improved sorting. As sorting
decreases, the pores are infilled by the smaller particles.
Grain packing
Depositional process
Porosity and permeability are rapidly reduced due to packing adjustments
and compaction early on during burial.

Grain orientation
The orientation has a major effect on permeability. The ratio of vertical to
horizontal permeability in a reservoir is important because of its effect on coning as
the oil and gas are produced.

Types of reservoir rocks

1. Sandstone reservoir rocks

The term sand refers to grain with sizes between (62 m - 2 mm). The
performance of the sandstone as a reservoir rock is described by its combination
of porosity and permeability depending on the degree to which the sand
dominates its. The favorable texture is depicted by packaging of similar sized
grains, not a combination of coarse and fine grained composition. The best
sandstone reservoirs are those that are composed mainly of quartz grains of sand
size of nearly equal sizes or silica cement, with minimal fragmented particles.
Sandstone reservoirs are generally 25 meters thick.

2. Carbonate reservoir rocks.

The most fascinating aspects of carbonate reservoir rocks are their content.
Carbonates are usually made of fossils which range from the very small single
cell to the larger shelled animals. Most carbonate rocks are deposited at or in
very close neighborhood to their site of creation. The "best-sorted" carbonate
rocks are Oolites in which encompass grains of the same size and shapes even
though Oolites are poorly sorted.