Sensitivity analysis of effective fluid and rock bulk modulus due to changes in pore pressure, temperature and saturation

• Perform sensitivity analysis on effective fluid and rock bulk modulus due to changes in reservoir parameters.
• Compare the effects of various reservoir parameter changes on fluid and rock bulk moduli.
• Formulate the expressions for changes in any fluid bulk modulus due to pressure and temperature changes using the Batzle and Wang equation (1992).

Fluid substitution plays a vital role in time-lapse seismic modeling and interpretation. It is, therefore, very important to quantify as exactly as possible the changes in fluid bulk modulus due to changes in reservoir parameters. In this paper, we analyze the sensitivities in effective fluid bulk modulus due to changes in reservoir parameters like saturation, pore-pressure and temperature. The sensitivities are analyzed for two extreme bounds, i.e. the Voigt average and the Reuss average, for various fluid combinations (i.e. oil–water, gas–water and gas–oil). We quantify that the effects of pore-pressure and saturation changes are highest in the case of gas–water combination, while the effect of temperature is highest for oil–gas combination. Our results show that sensitivities vary with the bounds, even for same amount of changes in any reservoir parameter. In 4D rock physics studies, we often neglect the effects of pore-pressure or temperature changes assuming that those effects are negligible compare to the effect due to saturation change. Our analysis shows that pore-pressure and temperature changes can be vital and sometimes higher than the effect of saturation change. We investigate these effects on saturated rock bulk modulus. We first compute frame bulk modulus using the Modified Hashin Shtrikman (MHS) model for carbonate rocks and then perform fluid substitution using the Gassmann equation. We consider upper bound of the MHS as elastic behavior for stiffer rocks and lower bound of the MHS as elastic behavior for softer rocks. We then investigate four various combinations: stiff rock with upper bound (the Voigt bound) as effective fluid modulus, stiff rock with lower bound (Reuss bound) as effective fluid modulus, soft rock with upper bound as effective fluid modulus and soft rock with lower bound as effective fluid modulus. Our results show that the effect of any reservoir parameter change is highest for soft rock and lower bound combination and lowest for stiff rock and upper bound combination.