ROCK PHYSICS TEMPLATE TO ESTIMATE THE EFFECTS OF TOTAL ORGANIC CARBON (TOC) AND MINERALOGY ON THE SEISMIC ELASTIC PROPERTIES OF IMMATURE SHALE RESERVOIR

Abstract

The low porosity and permeability shale are nowadays known as self-resourcing reservoirs. In the unique organic shales, TOC has a signifi cant contribution to the elastic properties of rocks. TOC behaves like porosity to a density log and effects in decreasing density. To reduce the uncertainty due to TOC and mineral variability effect, a quantitative interpretation of shale reservoirs should be done properly to obtain the best image of shale systems. In this study, we built rock-physics templates (RPT) to esti mate seismic response by defi ning the relationship between total organic carbon (TOC) and effective elastic properties of shale reservoirs of a data set from South Sumatera Basin, Indonesia. RPT is carried out by incorporating the amount of organic matter into shale pore space as a solid-fi lling inclusion. Moreover, shale porosity is assumed to be fully water-saturated determined by the in-situ conditions. We have estimated the general distribution of pore geometry by investigating aspect ratio from the dataset. A solid background of shale from several different minerals is estimated by using effective medium theory. Properties of porous rocks for solid pore infi ll are estimated from a generalization of Brown-Korringa Equation. Effective elastic properties of bulk rock frame fi lled with a fl uid are obtained from Gassmann equations. Results show that increasing the TOC volumes generally reduces both P-wave and S-wave velocities, acoustic impedance, and density. On the contrary, the vp/vs ratio increased as the impact of immature organic matter which will be more affecting shale rigidity than its compressibility.