Clastic

Reservoir rocks are either of clastic or carbonate composition. The former are composed of silicates, usually sandstone, the latter of biogenetically derived detritus, such as coral or shell fragments. There are some important differences between the two rock types which affect the quality of the reservoir and its interaction with fluids which flow through them. 

With a few exceptions reservoir rocks are sediments. The two main categories are siliciclastic rocks, usually referred to as elastics or sandstones , and carbonate rocks. Most reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea are contained in a clastic depositional environment many of the giant fields of the Middle East are contained in carbonate rocks. Before looking at the significance of depositional environments for the production process let us investigate some of the main characteristics of both categories. 

Shallow marine/ coastal (clastic) Sand bars, tidal channels. Generally coarsening upwards. High subsidence rate results in stacked reservoirs. Reservoir distribution dependent on wave and tide action. Prolific producers as a result of clean and continuous sand bodies. Shale layers may cause vertical barriers to fluid flow. 

It is believed that the majority of clastic reservoir rocks are water wet, but the subject of wettability is a contentious one. 

The field unit for permeability is the Darcy (D) or millidarcy (mD). For clastic oil reservoirs, a good permeability would be greater than 0.1 D (100 mD), while a poor permeability would be less than 0.01 D (10 mD). For practical purposes, the millidarcy is commonly used (1 mD = 10" m ). For gas reservoirs 1 mD would be a reasonable permeability because the viscosity of gas is much lower than that of oil, this permeability would yield an acceptable flowrate for the same pressure gradient. Typical fluid velocities in the reservoir are less than one metre per day. 

Burchcll, T.D., Pickup, I.M., McEnancy, B. and Cooke, R.G., The relationship between microstructure and the reduction of clastic modulus in thermally and radiolytically corroded nuclear graphites, Carbon, 1986, 24, 545 549. 

Klassiker, m. classic, klassisch, a. classic, classical, klastisch, a. clastic. 

Primary porosity—porosily formed at the time the sediment was deposited. Sedimentary rocks that typically exhibit primary porosity are the clastic (also called fragmental or detrital) rocks, which are composed of erosional fragments from older beds. These particles are classified by grain size. 

Sediment type %CaCO % clastic and clayey material % amorphous silica % pelagic sed. Composition... 

The most stable minerals are often physically eroded before they have a chance to chemically decompose. Minerals that decompose contribute to the dissolved load in rivers, and their solid chemical-weathering products contribute to the secondary minerals in the solid load. The secondary minerals and the more stable primary minerals are the most important constituents of clastic sedimentary rocks. Consequently, the secondary minerals of one cycle of erosion are... 

Clastic reactions from 2-keto acid-CoA esters produced in a number of degradations... 

Sedimentary rocks have formed as a result of accumulation and compaction of mineral particles derived from pre-existing rocks, transported from their original places of occurrence and deposited in new environments. The essential ingredients for the formation of sedimentary rocks are (i) source materials, (ii) mechanical and chemical disintegration of these source materials, (iii) transportation of the released materials either in a clastic form... 

Loess is a well-sorted, usually calcareous, non-stratified, yellowish-grey, aeolian clastic sediment. It consists predominantly of silt-sized particles (2-50 mm), and contains normally less than 20 percent clay and less than 15 percent sand. It covers the land surface as a blanket, which is less than 8 meters thick in the Netherlands (exceptionally 17 meters) but can reach up to 40 meters in Eastern Europe and 330 meters in China. 

Anisotropic materials have different properties in different directions (1-7). 1-Aamples include fibers, wood, oriented amorphous polymers, injection-molded specimens, fiber-filled composites, single crystals, and crystalline polymers in which the crystalline phase is not randomly oriented. Thus anisotropic materials are really much more common than isotropic ones. But if the anisotropy is small, it is often neglected with possible serious consequences. Anisoiropic materials have far more than two independent clastic moduli— generally, a minimum of five or six. The exact number of independent moduli depends on the symmetry in the system (1-7). Anisotropic materials will also have different contractions in different directions and hence a set of Poisson s ratios rather than one. 

As a first example, we consider the diagenesis of clastic sandstones in the Gippsland basin, southeastern Australia, basing our model on the work of Harrison (1990). The Gippsland basin is the major offshore petroleum province in Australia. Oil production is from the Latrobe group, a fluvial to shallow marine sequence of Late Cretaceous to early Eocence age that partly fills a Mesozoic rift valley. 

In this chapter, in an attempt to devise methods for helping to foresee such unfavorable consequences, we construct models of the chemical interactions between injected fluids and the sediments and formation waters in petroleum reservoirs. We consider two cases the effects of using seawater as a waterflood, taking oil fields of the North Sea as an example, and the potential consequences of using alkali flooding (i.e., the injection of a strong caustic solution) in order to increase oil production from a clastic reservoir. 

Fig. 30.3. Variation in pH during simulated alkali floods of a clastic petroleum reservoir at 70 °C, using 0.5 N NaOH, Na2C03, and Na2Si03 solutions. Pore fluid is displaced by unreacted flooding solution at a rate of one-half of the system s pore volume per day.

Fig. 30.4. Changes in the volumes of minerals in the reservoir rock during the simulated alkali floods (Fig. 30.3) of a clastic petroleum reservoir using NaOH, Na2CC>3, and Na2SiC>3 solutions. Minerals that react in small volumes are omitted from the plots. Abbreviations Anal = analcime, Cc = calcite, Daw = dawsonite, Dol = dolomite, Kaol = kaolinite, Muse = muscovite, Parag = paragonite, Phlog = phlogopite, Qtz= quartz, Trid = tridymite.

In the simulations, a significant fraction (about 50% to 80%) of the alkali present in solution is consumed by reactions near the wellbore with the reservoir minerals (as shown in Reaction 30.6 for the NaOH flood), mostly by the production of analcime, paragonite, and dawsonite [NaAlC03(0H)2]. In the clastic reservoir considered, therefore, alkali floods might be expected to cause formation damage (mostly due to the precipitation of zeolites) and to be less effective at increasing oil mobility than in a reservoir where they do not react extensively with the formation. 

Hutcheon, I., 1984, A review of artificial diagenesis during thermally enhanced recovery. In D. A. MacDonald and R. C. Surdam (eds.), Clastic Diagenesis. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, pp. 413—429. 

Amy Berger helped me write Chapter 10 (Surface Complexation), and Chapter 31 (Acid Drainage) is derived in part from her work. Edward Warren and Richard Worden of British Petroleum s Sunbury lab contributed data for calculating scaling in North Sea oil fields, Richard Wendlandt first modeled the effects of alkali floods on clastic reservoirs, and Kenneth Sorbie helped write Chapter 30 (Petroleum Reservoirs). I borrowed from Elisabeth Rowan s study of the genesis of fluorite ores at the Albigeois district, Wendy Harrison s study of the Gippsland basin, and a number of other published studies, as referenced in the text. 

Various forms of macro- and microelements differ in their ability to migrate and redistribute among the soil profile. The elements contained in clastic minerals are practically immobile. The elements, bound to finely dispersed clay minerals, are either co-transported with clay particles, or are involved in sorption-desorption processes. Part of the elements are found in concretions and also in very thin coating films of hydrated iron oxides some elements make a part of specially edaphic organic compounds. 

---