Applicability of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Experiment in Analyzing Pore and Fluid Distribution Characteristics of Tight Sandstone: A Case Study in the Julu Area, Bohai Bay Basin, China

Abstract

Characterizing the pore and fluid distribution is critical for evaluating the reservoir potential of new areas. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is considered as an experimental method capable of full-scale characterization of pore characteristics. However, the T 2 spectrum of a saturated sample is affected by a combination of sample and experimental parameters, and it is important to confirm whether the T 2 spectrum fully reflects the sample pore information. Eight tight sandstone samples from the Julu area were selected for thin section identification, mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP), NMR, NMR cryoporometry (NMRC), and centrifugation experiments to critically analyze the applicability of the NMR results. Two methods, the similarity method and Kozeny’s equation method, were used to calculate surface relaxivity, a critical parameter for converting NMR T 2 signals into pore information. The discussion focuses on the applicability of the calculated surface relaxivity and the phenomenon of T 2 signal changes in a short relaxation range after centrifugation. The main results are as follows: The surface relaxivity values calculated using the different methods differed significantly. The surface relaxivity calculated using the same method reflected the relative magnitude of the true surface relaxivity of the samples. For the samples with large surface relaxivity, there may be partial misses of the short relaxation signal, the NMR porosity was smaller than the gas-measured porosity, there was a variation in the T 2 spectrum in the short relaxation range after centrifugation, and the calculated surface relaxivity was small. The surface relaxivity calculated using Kozeny’s equation was nearly accurate, but perhaps smaller than the true value. The T 2 spectra mainly reflected macropore information. This study suggests that PSDs converted from T 2 spectra of saturated samples should be judged with relative caution rather than solely based on the peak or range correspondence between the two curves, and the minimum centrifugal radius can be used as a constraint.