INTRODUCTION

Essentially, oil and gas emerge in the subsurface formation called reservoir. The properties of reservoir
itself which have porousity and permeability enable it to trap petroleum. Porousity is defined as the
spacing between the grains of the rocks that make it up whereby permeability is defined as the
connection of pore spaces to each other.
The geometry of the reservoir is drawn onto a map, the isopach map, comprising of several contour
lines. The map is crucial used for determining and estimating the volume of the reservoir. Yet, the data
can be used to determine the quantity of hydrocarbons present in the reservoir.
Many ways can be used to identify the volume of reservoir from the isopach map and one of them is
by using count-the-square method. The method is unfortunately not precise because the values
acquired is regularly differ when is conducted by different analyser.
A device called planimeter is introduced to cope with this problem simultaneously. Yet, an accurate
value of the areas enclosed by the contour line can be obtained precisely from the isopach map.

OBJECTIVE
1. To determine the volume and capacity of a reservoir from the isopach map by using a planimeter. 2.
To implement the correct techniques of using planimeter to measure area of contour from isopach
map.

THEORY
Petroleum reservoirs usually contain abundant hydrocarbons in the microscopic pores under
geological formations and to transmit the fluids under particular driving forces. It is important to make
a good estimation of the hydrocarbons present in a reservoir. Instead, the other things that need to be
concerned crucially is to determine the Oil Initially In Place (OIIP) and the Gas Initially In Place
(GIIP) (1). To implement it, several factors have to be considered and one of them is the bulk rock
volume estimation.
For details, bulk rock volume is the gross rock volume of rock above hydrocarbon-water contact and
can be determined by mapping and correlating contour maps of the given area. In order to determine
the area that contains reservoir rock, the calculation of the net-to-gross ratio with bulk rock volume is
implemented.
Furthermore, storage capacity of a reservoir is determined from contour map. The contour line denotes
the full reservoir level is drawn on the contour map and the area enclosed between successive contours
are measured by planimeter.
In determining the hydrocarbons contained in a potential reservoir, the fundamental physical
characteristics that need to be concerned are porosity, permeability, net-to-gross ratio and bulk rock
volume (1). These informations are used to calculate original oil in place (OOIP) and original gas in
place (OGIP). Hence, an instrument called a planimeter is used to determine the area of the contours
on an isopach map to calculate the bulk rock volume of the reservoir.

REFERENCES
(1) Preliminary Study on Gas Storage Capacity and Gas in Place for CBM Potential in Balingian
Coalfield, Sarawak Malaysia (2011). Kong Chai Chen, Sonny Irawan, Chow Weng Sum, Saleem
Qadir Tunio, Vol.1, International Journal of Applied Science and Technology, Geosciences and
Petroleum Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS