Executive Summary

Abstract

Our research results for the past year are divided into two major areas: 1) the quantification and prediction of reservoir heterogeneity and 2) the use of borehole measurements to quantify fluid flow related properties. As we look towards the future of instrumented reservoirs and downhole sensors, it is clear that these areas of research will begin to overlap in many ways. This overlap is evident in several of the papers presented in this report. One example is the migration of reverse VSP data (Krasovec et al, 2001), which develops a methodology with applications into reservoir imaging using downhole sensors as well as monitoring with acoustic emissions. Another example is the measurement of seismoelectric effects in boreholes (Zhu and Toksoz, 2001), which has great potential for reservoir monitoring. Other applications presented this year, such as Herrmann (2001) and Lyons et al. (2001), developed out of scaling analysis studies on well log data and now provide a promising method for extracting lithologic heterogeneity information from seismic reflection data. We are also extending our interest into new areas of measurement, such as NMR imaging (Leu et al., 2001), in order to develop a better understanding of the physics of fluid flow in porous media. We also continue our research philosophy of integrating theory, laboratory measurements, and field data analysis in all areas of reservoir science.