WATER SATURATION MODELING

There are many methods available to determine the water saturation; these include
petrophysical models (log evaluation), the saturationheight function from capillary
pressure data and determining the water saturation directly from the core.

Themethodsmost commonly used in industry to estimate thewater

saturation are those based onpetrophysicalmodels. The Archie equation
(Archie, 1941) can be used to determine the water saturation in a clean
sandstone formation. It is based on the assumption that brine is the only
conductor present. However, this is not the case in a shaly formation,
where the clay produces an additional conductive path beside the
formation water. Many petrophysical models have been developed to
estimate saturations in the shaly formation. They can broadly be divided
into two groups: Vsh and CEC models (Worthington, 1985).

The first class of models (Vsh models) assumes that the extra
conductivity of the shale is directly related to the volume of the shale
(Simandoux, 1963; Poupon and Leveaux, 1971). These models have
many disadvantages; the major one is that there is no common
indicator of the volume of shale (Vsh) (Ipek, 2002). Furthermore, they
ignore the role of electrical conductivity of clay minerals, which
depends on the type of clay. It has been shown that the Vsh models fail
in many cases to calculate representative values of water saturation
fromwireline logs (Waxman and Smits, 1968; Ipek, 2002; Rezaee and
Lemon, 1996; Al-Ruwaili and Al-Waheed, 2004). The second type of
shale models is called cation exchange capacity (CEC) models. These
models consider the electrical conductivity of clay minerals
(Worthington, 1985). They are based on the CEC which represents
the ability of clay to conduct electricity, such as the Waxman and
Smits and dual water models (Clavier et al., 1984). However, input
parameters for these models are not always available and the
laboratory processes to obtain them can be very time consuming
and sometimes give ambiguous results (Worthington, 1985; Rezaee
and Lemon, 1996; Ipek, 2002; Shokir, 2004).

The water saturation can also be obtained from capillary pressure

data by developing the saturationheight function. In homogenous
formations, one curve can be used to represent the whole reservoir.
However, in heterogeneous systems, many curves are required,
because the shape and the position of the curve are dependent on
the permeability, porosity, lithology and the pore size distribution of
the rock. Therefore, it is necessary to combine all the capillary data to
one or more representative curves which describe a particular
reservoir (Desbrandes and Gualdron, 1988, O'Meara et al., 1992; and
Thommer, 1960). There are several methods available to generate the
saturationheight function, such as the Leverett J-function and
Heseldin method (Leverett, 1941; Heseldin, 1974). However, these
methods may be inaccurate for complex systems and cannot incorporate
the additional information obtained from logging tools.

The last method of estimating the water

saturation is directly
measuring it from the core (DeanStark
method). The method is
accurate and gives reliable results, provided
that handling and treatment
processes are carefully carried out and special
type of coring
methods such as sponge core are used.
However, this method is
expensive to obtain compared with the
saturation models.