Sedimentological and petrological controls on chlorite coats in sandstone reservoirs - The Cook Formation

Project description
Reservoir properties in sandstones generally decrease with depth, and this leads to greater uncertainty when exploring for hydrocarbons in deeper prospects. However, some sandstones have chlorite coats on quartz grains which inhibit cementation and leads to good reservoir properties down to 6 km. Chlorite also effectively mineralizes CO2, something which is a benefit when storing CO2. Understanding chlorite coats is therefore important, but it is currently not known what controls presence and absence of chlorite coats

Reservoir properties in sandstones generally decrease with depth, and this leads to greater uncertainty when exploring for hydrocarbons in deeper prospects. However, some sandstones have chlorite coats on quartz grains which inhibit cementation and leads to good reservoir properties down to 6 km. Chlorite also effectively mineralizes CO2, something which is a benefit when storing CO2. Understanding chlorite coats is therefore important, but it is currently no way to predict the presence of chlorite coats before drillling. In the DeepReservoir project, we will investigae the contorls on chlorite coats and good reservoir properties deep reservoirs, and we will create predictive models for presence of chlorite coats.

This particular MSc project will investigate the Early Jurassic Cook Formation across the Norwegian North Sea in terms of geographical distirbution of chlorite coats, sedimentological controls on chlorite coats, and petrographic controls on chlorite coats.

Eksterne data / External data: 
Core, well, seismic, and petrographic data from project partners, Equinor and AkerBP

Field, lab and analysis:
Core logging at the Equinor, AkerBP and Norwegian Petroleum Directorate core stores
Sedimentological analysis of core data
Petrographic work on thin sections
Work on the Scanning-Electron Microscope lab