Course content

Carbonate reservoirs are considered to be the most significant source of hydrocarbon production for this century. This course is offered to provide an introduction to carbonate reservoir evaluation through use of academic and industry course material. Basic terminology and concepts will be taught through lectures, group work and self study assignments: The geology and diagenesis of carbonates. Sequence stratigraphy. Petrophysics and seismics in carbonates. Basic reservoir engineering and well testing. What challenges do carbonate reservoirs give? Examples of different carbonate reservoirs will be used to demonstrate the importance of integrating engineering and geoscience data and understanding in effective reservoir management. The integration of all disciplines will be stressed through lectures, group work and self-study assignments. Data will be provided for practical exercises on evaluation of carbonate reservoirs.

Learning outcome

Ingress:
The course gives competence in evaluation of carbonate reservoirs. These can be very different from clastic sandstone reservoirs and contains more that 50% of the petroleum reserves of the earth. The students learn about the geology and the petrophysics of such rocks. They are also given basic knowledge of reservoir engineering, well testing and seismics. At the end of the semester they are going to do a large project where they will evaluae data from a carbonate reservoir under the guidance of experienced people from industry. This project is conducted over a few weeks, and more working hours than normally must be expected. The extra hours will be compensated by free time in other periods.

Knowledge:
The students are expected to understand fundamental data types and aspects of carbonate reservoirs. They should be able to work with such data to evaluate the potential of such a reservoir. They are working together with other students with a complementary competence - just like in the industry.

Skills:
The students will get insights into the complexity of carbonate reservoirs. They should be able to evaluate data from such reservoirs and find if the data are good enough to be used in the interpretation process.

General competence:
Working together with other students with different competence in the evaluation of petroleum reservoirs is an important competence in the oil industry. The industry is asking for this. The competence on carbonate reservoirs is generally small in Norway. Few universities in the world can give the student the competence they get here.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures and exercises, self study assignments. Data sets will be provided for group work and self study to teach the methods of "how to evaluate a carbonate reservoir". Mandatory tests in the semester. On retake of exam, an oral exam may be given. Lectures are held in English if international master students attend the course. If the teaching is given in English, the examination papers will be given in English only. Students are free to choose Norwegian or English for written assessments.

Compulsory assignments

• Exercises
• Semester test

Recommended previous knowledge

Basic knowledge of geology. The student must have knowledge of petrophysics equivalent to TPG4175 Petrophysics BC.

Required previous knowledge

Knowledge equivalent to TPG4175.

Course materials

Lucia, F. Jerry. "Carbonate Reservoir Characterization. A good basic background overview is found in: Scholle, P., A. Bebout, D.G, and Moore, C.H., eds: Carbonate depositional environments. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Memoir 33. Some of the relevant reference material will be provided during the course