From the President

Dick Merkel
EnCana

As I sit in my warm office interpreting logs on this snowy day, thoughts of times when I was involved in data acquisition come to mind. Operating companies now seldom send their petrophysicists to the field to witness logging jobs. However if you ask any of us with grey hair, that was not the case in times past. Moreover each of us can tell war stories of what it was like on those cold winter days (and especially the nights). In my insane youth, I can recall climbing into the tower of a drill rig in Wyoming to hammer on the top sheave that had frozen in the middle of the night. OSHA would no longer allow such behavior.

After a recent logging job, the logging engineer called me to confirm that the desired logging suite was complete, and the data would be available on the web. Since we had been in close contact through the logging job, it was apparent that his crew had little sleep. When asked, he informed me that he had been up for the past 49 hours. I remember those times, with the constant intake of coffee. We are in debt to these dedicated engineers who acquire the data we use, and acquire them under some of the worst conditions (surface as well as down-hole). We should dedicate January as the "Be kind to your logging engineer month". 

"Open-Hole or Cased-Hole Logs in Tight Gas Sands?"

Steve Cumella

Bill Barrett Corporation

In many tight-gas sandstone plays, cased-hole logs are being run instead of open-hole logs as a cost-savings measure.  Open-hole logs have information that can be critical in making completion decisions, especially regarding identification of wet zones.  Service companies calculate emulated neutron and density porosity curves, as well as resistivity curves from pulsed-neutron log data.  In many instances, these emulated curves do not match open-hole data very well. 

Furthermore, SP response and invasion profiles from resistivity logs provide valuable information regarding permeability and water salinities that is not available from cased-hole data.  Examples will be shown comparing cased-hole data to open-hole data, as well as examples of pay identification from open-hole logs that would not have been possible from cased-hole logs.

About the Speaker

Steve got his bachelors and masters in geology at University of Texas at Austin. Steve spent his first 9 years with Chevron. Steve has worked the Piceance Basin at Barrett Resources, Williams, Bill Barrett Corporation for the last 7 years.