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Case Studies - Water and Petroleum Fluid Compositional Variations |
1 Shell International Exploration and Production, Bellaire Technology Centre, P.O. Box 481, Houston, Texas 77001, USA thomas.taylor{at}shell.com
2 Shell Exploration and Production Company, New Orleans, Louisiana 70161, USA
Jurassic Norphlet Formation sandstone reservoirs in Mobile Bay (offshore Alabama, USA) produce gas from great depths (>6.4 km) and elevated temperatures (>200 °C). Quartz cement is concentrated at the top of these aeolian reservoirs forming a low porosity ‘tight-zone’ of widely variable thickness (3–58 m) above a more porous reservoir section. The extent of the tight-zone is independent of depositional facies and its thickness strongly influences well performance. Intergranular porosity in the Norphlet has been preserved by inhibition of quartz cementation due to the occurrence of robust grain-coating chlorite. Quantitative petrographic data reveal that chlorite grain-coat coverage is less in the tight-zone sands (mean = 92%) than in the reservoir sands (mean = 99%). Burial history and quartz precipitation kinetics modelling indicate that this seemingly minor difference in the completeness of grain coatings is sufficient to produce the observed differences in cementation and porosity. Quartz cementation to form the tight-zone took place under conditions of deep burial and high temperature. It followed in time the onset of pressure solution, emplacement of liquid hydrocarbons, and the precipitation of a solid hydrocarbon film (pyrobitumen) on the walls of the intergranular pores. Fluid inclusion microthermometry data indicate that volumetrically significant quartz cement precipitated at temperatures of 150 °C or greater from highly saline aqueous fluids. Hydrocarbon-bearing inclusions are notably absent in quartz cement of the tight-zone, implying that the pore fluids were predominantly brine during precipitation. Oil and gas associated with pyrobitumen evidently escaped from Norphlet traps prior to tight-zone cementation. Gas presently found in Norphlet reservoirs of Mobile Bay represents a relatively recent accumulation and is not the product of in situ thermal cracking of oil.
