NPF Reservoir Characterization Conference

Linda Bonnell and I will be attending the NPF Biennial Reservoir Characterization Conference in Stavanger, Norway on December 3-4, 2025.

The conference lineup looks great and I hope that we will see you there. Below is the abstract summary for the talk I'll be giving, which is co-authored by Linda and Jim Guilkey.

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Making Rock Without a Sample: Petrology-Inspired Digital Twins for Reservoir Characterization

When core is unavailable for laboratory characterization, rock properties may be constrained using grain-/pore-scale digital twins provided that they accurately represent rock microstructure. This talk presents a methodology for deriving three-dimensional rock microstructure by simulating the effects of deposition and diagenesis. The resulting digital rocks serve as inputs for the computation of fluid-transport and geomechanical properties. We demonstrate that rock property calculations made using digital twins that are created with this methodology have an accuracy that is equivalent to cases where microCT-derived rock representations are used as input for physics simulations.

We review the petrologic basis for constructing sandstone twins and compare simulation results with microstructural and geomechanical data from sandstone reservoirs with variable framework compositions and extents of diagenetic alteration. Beyond sandstones, the approach generalizes to other clastic materials such as mudrocks and conglomerates, lithologies that have been challenging for conventional digital rock approaches. To illustrate the versatility of the approach we show a proof-of-concept digital twin of a mudrock that undergoes microstructural changes with compaction.