An investigation of the effect of wettability on NMR characteristics of sandstone rock and fluid systems

Predicting reservoir wettability and its effect on fluid distribution and hydrocarbon recovery remains one of the major challenges in reservoir evaluation and engineering. Current laboratory based techniques require the use of rock-fluid systems that are representative of in situ reservoir wettability and preferably under reservoir conditions of pressure and temperature. However, the estimation of reservoir wettability is difficult to obtain from most laboratory experiments. In theory, it should be possible to determine the wettability of reservoir rock-fluid systems by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) due to the surface-sensitive nature of NMR relaxation measurements. Thus, NMR logs should in principle be able to give an indication of reservoir wettability, however, as yet there is no proven model to relate reservoir wettability to NMR measurements. Laboratory NMR measurements in representative and well-characterised rock-fluid systems are crucial to interpret NMR log data. A series of systematic laboratory experiments were designed using a range of sandstone core plugs with the aim of investigating the feasibility of using NMR measurements as a means to determine wettability. NMR T-2 spectrum measurements were performed in reservoir core plugs at different saturations and wettability states. The samples were first cleaned by hot solvent extraction, then saturated with brine and a drainage/imbibition cycle performed. At the lowest brine saturation the same samples were aged in crude oil and a further drainage/imbibition cycle performed. NMR transverse relaxation time, T-2, was measured on fully saturated samples, at residual saturations and some intermediate saturation values. The wettability of the samples is evaluated using the Archie's saturation exponent and by Amott-Harvey wettability index. The wettability of the cores studied ranged from mixed-wet to oil-wet. The NMR T2 results for cleaned and aged reservoir core plugs, containing oil and water, show that fluid distribution and wettability can be deduced from such measurements. The results on aged core plugs suggest that the oil occupies a wide range of pore sizes and is in contact with the pore walls. The results presented in the paper suggest that NMR T-2 relaxation has the potential to be an alternative technique to evaluate rock wettability in the laboratory and in the reservoir. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.