A method for calculating saturation in tight sandstone reservoirs based on the dual porosity model

Introduction With the continuous development of exploration and development, tight sandstone reservoirs have become an essential field of oil and gas exploration. The tight sandstone reservoirs are characterized by complex lithology, poor pore structure, and strong heterogeneity, which bring great difficulties to formation evaluation by well logs. Especially, the accuracy of the Archie formula for calculating the water saturation of tight sandstone reservoirs containing fractures is not high, saturation evaluation faces greater challenges. Therefore, how to calculate the saturation of tight sandstone reservoirs more accurately is an urgent problem to be solved. Methods In this paper, the tight sandstone reservoirs of the Jurassic Ahe Formation in the Tarim Basin were taken as the research area. A saturation model that combines the effects of shale and fractures was proposed. Specifically, if the shale content is more than 20%, the Indonesian formula is used to calculate the saturation. If the shale content is less than 20%, the dual porosity model is adopted. Based on the rock resistivity and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiment results, the porosity and T 2 logarithmic mean values are selected as influencing factors to calculate the key parameters of the dual porosity model. Results and Discussion The saturation of tight sandstone reservoirs in the Jurassic Ahe Formation of the Tarim Basin is calculated through the method proposed in this paper. The case study shows that the accuracy of the proposed method is higher than that of the Archie model. The method proposed in this paper demonstrates excellent adaptability in the quantitative evaluation of saturation for tight sandstone reservoirs.