A Method to Integrate Geological Knowledge in Variogram Modeling of Facies: A Case Study of a Fluvial Deltaic Reservoir

Abstract

Variograms are important tools in the spatial distribution of facies and petrophysical properties. Due to the scarcity of subsurface well data, both spatially and quantity wise, variograms representing the data tend to have a lot of uncertainties. In order to reduce uncertainty in variograms, well data can be supplemented with the geological knowledge of the reservoir. This has been demonstrated by various authors in previous works. In their paper “Methodology to Incorporate Geological Knowledge in Variogram Modeling,” A. Bahar and M. Kelkar introduced a methodology to incorporate geological knowledge by studying the energy level of the depositional environment and grain texture. They used these two attributes to determine the relative distance of continuity of the lithofacies and incorporated it in the variogram modeling. In this paper, we introduce another attribute that determines the continuity of lithofacies; the accommodation or deposition space. For illustration purpose, two sets of facies models were constructed: The first using subsurface well data only and the second using well data and geological information of the reservoir. The two sets of models showed significant variation in the property distribution. The first set gave a more random appearance of the facies distribution while the second set gave a more realistic depiction of the depositional environment of the reservoir. We concluded that other than the grain size and the energy level of the depositional environment, another important determinant for continuity in variograms is the knowledge of the depositional space. Incorporating the knowledge of the depositional environment enabled a more accurate estimation of the variogram parameters. This resulted in an improvement in the accuracy of the model.