A Study of Relationship Between Permeability and Porosity of Sandstone Reservoir Using Hydraulic Conductivity Method

Determining the correlation between permeability and porosity is very crucial in reservoir characterization and description. Generally, the correlation is utilized to predict a permeability value from porosity data which results from logging or coring for uncored zones. Difficulty in building a general correlation between permeability and porosity became the developmental background of the hydraulic conductivity method. This method lies on the classification of the permeability and porosity relationship, based on pore size and geometry. The purpose of this study is to generate grouping of rock samples based on zonation of permeability and porosity correlation with characteristics of pore structure and geometry. The capillary pipe model is the basis for developing the method. This method can be used to determine permeability in positions only having porosity data from the log. This paper also presents a method to determine the value of effective hydraulic pore diameter dH, by employing the Gauss-Newton method. This study has used 145 core samples originated from multi-stacked sandstone reservoirs. The core samples have very wide ranges of porosity (0.042 – 0.46) and permeability (0.1 – 7442 mD). Analysis of both the data and the correlation generates new understanding about pore structure and geometry. Application of the developed method to all the core samples results in very good permeability prediction. Keyword: Hydraulic Conductivity, dH, GaussNewton