Petrophysical, geomechanical and depositional environment characterization of the Triassic TAGI reservoir from the Hassi Berkine South field, Berkine Basin, Southeastern Algeria

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2021.104002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Sedimentary structures interpreted from the cores reveal a fluvial depositional environment responsible for TAGI Formation.

  • Petrophysical rock typing infers that the medium to coarse grained, laterally extensive, amalgamated channel sandstones (RRT1) yield the best reservoir attributes.

  • TAGI has a normal to strike-slip transitional (Sv ≥ SHMax > Shmin) stress state.

  • Reservoir stress path and available depletion window are implied to avoid production-induced normal faulting.

Abstract

An integrated knowledge of the sedimentological data, petrophysical and geomechanical characteristics significantly enhances the understanding of the reservoir properties, leading to a reliable subsurface modeling. This work presents a comprehensive reservoir assessment of the prolific Triassic Argilo-Gréseux Inférieur (TAGI) sandstones of the Hassi Berkine South (HBNS) field, Southeastern Algeria. The Lower Triassic producer appears to be laid down on the Late Devonian erosional surface (Hercynian unconformity) in a fluvial depositional system. Based on the sedimentary structures, a fluvial depositional environment is deciphered from cores. Lateral and vertical disposition of the channel and floodplain deposits from regional well log correlation infers a shift of depositional regime from braided in the SW to meandering in the NE direction. Two distinct reservoir rock types (RRT) are interpreted from core-based petrophysical assessment. RRT1 is composed of macro-megaporous medium to very coarse grained amalgamated channel sandstones and yields the best reservoir attributes, while the mesoporous fine grained RRT2 translates to impervious to poor reservoir quality. RRT1 channel sands are found to be laterally continuous, while the fine grained crevasse splay sands corresponding to RRT2 are laterally discontinuous, thus making them difficult to correlate field wide. Rock-mechanical property-based in-situ stress estimates suggested a normal to strike-slip transitional (Sv ≥ SHMax > Shmin) stress state in the TAGI Formation. Direct measurements indicate that the TAGI reservoir had an initial pore pressure gradient of 11.08 MPa/km and is presently depleted by 2.1–2.5 MPa. A stable depletion stress path value of 0.57 is inferred considering a pore pressure-minimum horizontal stress coupling. At the present-day depletion rate, normal faulting is unlikely to have happened at the TAGI reservoir level and it can be depleted by another 25 MPa before inducing any production-induced reservoir instabilities.

Introduction

With several proven oil and gas accumulations, the Berkine Basin is a prominent hydrocarbon producer in Algeria, which has been contributing to the nation's energy sector for many decades. Hassi Berkine South (HBNS) is one of the prolific oil fields in the East Berkine Basin, being situated in Block 404, at the south of the famous Hassi Messaoud field (Loader et al., 2003). Hydrocarbon was discovered in 1995 from the Triassic Argilo-Gréseux Inférieur (TAGI) sandstones and the production began in 1998 (Thilliez et al., 2003). An estimated oil reserves of about 3 billion BOE have been identified from this basin (Echikh, 1998). However, integrated reservoir characterization studies are unavailable from the mentioned field area and the producing interval. A brief summary on the reservoir properties, field development approach and production curriculum had been reported so far (Wheller et al., 1999; Loader et al., 2003; Thilliez et al., 2003). Turner et al. (2001) and Rossi et al. (2002) interpreted the sedimentological and sequence stratigraphic aspects of the TAGI member in detail from the nearby region (Blocks 401–402 and Ourhoud field, respectively), however, no systematic studies on the reservoir quality, rock properties and geomechanical assessment have been reported so far. We took this opportunity to present a first-ever comprehensive reservoir characterization of the TAGI Formation from the HBNS field by combining drilling data, wireline logs and core-based as well as various direct subsurface measurements.

This work is subdivided into three main sections with the primary objectives to address the depositional system, petrophysical and geomechanical aspects of the reservoir: (i) Conventional cores, taken out from the TAGI interval were studied to interpret the primary sedimentary structures, facies association and depositional environment. (ii) detailed petrophysical analyses using cores and well logs to infer the reservoir quality, rock types, storage capacity and flow potential. (iii) Geomechanical characterization to assess the rock-mechanical properties, pore pressure, principal stress magnitudes as well as reservoir stress path to address the effect of hydrocarbon depletion on reservoir stability. The interrelationships between the mentioned aspects are discussed to shed light on the depositional pattern affecting the spatial petrophysical variability within the reservoir, in-situ stress state and implications for reservoir development considering the geomechanical stability of the TAGI reservoir which is under continuous depletion. Results are corroborated with the regional geological observations and offset field dataset and implications for reservoir developments have been discussed.

Section snippets

Geology of the studied area

The intracratonic Berkine Basin in NE Saharan platform hosts many proven hydrocarbon accumulations. It is situated between 6° and 9°30” E and 29°–32° N and presents a 7000 m thick column of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments. The basin evolution is characterized by three prominent stages (Galeazzi et al., 2010): (1) Pan-African faulting system of the Palaeozoic depocenters were reactivated and provided the accommodation space for the thick Paleozoic clastic intervals, (2) regional uplift and

Materials and methods

In total four wells drilled till the Devonian shales, targeting the primary clastic reservoir belonging to the Lower Triassic TAGI formation, encountered at an average vertical depth of 3250–3330 m. Out of four wells, two were exploratory wells and drilled in the initial phase (1995), before the field development, the other two studied wells were drilled in later years. From a huge well database, these have been chosen carefully, as these provide the best opportunity to study and interpret the

Depositional environment of the TAGI sandstones

Conventional core recovered from the TAGI reservoir are investigated to identify various primary sedimentary features. A 48 m cored interval was available from one of the exploratory wells (Well-3), which is used to calibrate the well log interpretations. Sedimentary structures identified from the TAGI cores of the Well-3 are presented in Fig. 2. A detailed core graphic log is presented in Fig. 3. At the lowermost lithostratigraphic part a sharp erosive contact corresponding to Hercynian

Regional depositional system during the triassic timeframe

Triassic TAGI reservoir is one of the most prolific and important hydrocarbon producers in the Berkine and Illizi basins, southeastern Algeria. The widespread Triassic was mostly dominated by continental to marginal marine sedimentation. The Triassic sediments were deposited right over the Late Devonian erosional surface corresponding to the Hercynian unconformity (Wheller et al., 1999; Turner et al., 2001). Based on the detailed core analysis, overall fluviatile deposition is inferred from the

Conclusions

This work presents an integrated reservoir characterization of the Lower Triassic TAGI reservoir from the HBNS field by combining the results from the well log analyses, cores and various petroleum data measurements. This study has provided a critical information about the facies architecture and depositional environment of the TAGI Formation. Petrophysical assessment identified two distinct reservoir rock types in terms of their storage and hydraulic flow potentials. The correlation between

Credit author statement

Rafik Baouche: Data curation, Supervision, Project administration, Resources, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing. Souvik Sen: Conceptualization, Resources, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Shib Sankar Ganguli: Resources, Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Hadj Arab Feriel: Resources, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

Authors express their sincere gratitude to Tuna Eren (Executive Editor), Amine Cherif and the other reviewers for providing constructive comments, which extremely benefited the manuscript. The authors are grateful to Sonatrach and Anadarko Algeria for providing the dataset. Direction of Higher Education and Algerian Scientific Research Ministry supported the research work carried by RB (No. 613_DGRSDT).

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