Heterolithic lithofacies in the Jurassic Tilje Formation, offshore mid-Norway, consist of three components – sand, silt and mud intercalated at the centimetre scale – and are generally difficult to characterize petrophysically with core and wireline data.  A near-wellbore model of the lower part of the Tilje Formation in the Heidrun Field is constructed to illustrate the application of these results to formation evaluation studies.  The sedimentological model is developed by detailed parameterization of a cored well interval and the petrophysical properties are based on core plug data, taking into account sampling bias and length scale.  The variation in petrophysical properties as a function of sample volume is a examined by calculating the representative elementary volume.  The sensitivity of the representative permeability values to the contrast between the three components is studied and gives a better understanding of the flow behaviour of this system.  These results are used to rescale the core plug data to a representative value and thereby quantify the uncertainty associated with the wireline-based estimates of  porosity and horizontal permeability and to give an improved estimate of kv/kh ratio.

Kjetil Nordahl, Philip S. Ringrose, Statoil; Renjun Wen, Geomodeling.

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