A digital rock physics approach to effective and total porosity for complex carbonates: pore-typing and applications to electrical conductivity

Recent advances in micro-CT techniques allow imaging heterogeneous carbonates at multiple scales and including voxel-wise registration of images at different resolution or in different saturation states. This enables characterising such carbonates at the pore-scale targeting the optimizing of hydrocarbon recovery in the face of structural heterogeneity, resulting in complex spatial fluid distributions. Here we determine effective and total porosity for different pore-types in a complex carbonate and apply this knowledge to improve our understanding of electrical properties by integrating experiment and simulation in a consistent manner via integrated core analysis. We consider Indiana Limestone as a surrogate for complex carbonate rock and type porosity in terms of macro- and micro-porosity using micro-CT images recorded at different resolution. Effective and total porosity fields are derived and partitioned into regions of macro-porosity, micro-porosity belonging to oolithes, and micro-porosity excluding oolithes’ rims. In a second step we use the partitioning of the micro-porosity to model the electrical conductivity of the limestone, matching experimental measurements by finding appropriate cementation exponents for the two different micro-porosity regions. We compare these calculations with calculations using a single cementation exponent for the full micro-porosity range. The comparison is extended to resistivity index at partial saturation, further testing the assignment of Archie parameters, providing insights into the regional connectivity of the different pore types.