Rock Typing, Scale & PXRF Analysis

Scale Analysis

During their production life, Petroleum and Gas wells intermittently become fouled to a point where flow is interrupted or ceased. We broadly call this Scale, but it’s a heading that can encompass a number of events from mineral precipitation, drill fluid/mud incompatibility, frac proppant flowback to formation collapse.

Likewise, a Scale event can take place in a well bore, production pipe, dewatering plant or anywhere else within the production system.

Challenger Geological Services can provide an analytical service, whereby if a sample of scale is submitted to us, we can apply a series of chemical and observational tests, using Microscope, pXRF and other analytical machines, to determine the constituent parts of the scale. In most cases this can be done on the same day the scale arrives at our premises, and an answer in the form of a brief report with photos, to both the origin of the scale and a potential best remedy to remove it can be provided. When a pXRF is used we also supply the graphed results on an Excell spreadsheet.

Our technician has been making scale determinations for 10 years and can provide a thorough investigative approach to supply remedial solutions.

Permeability Analysis of Reservoir Rocks

This service is useful in wells where the only physical samples available over a zone of interest are Ditch Cuttings. Sometimes reservoir production performance is not consistent with Log analysis or downhole tool results.

Challenger Geological Services can provide an observational service that analyses certain properties of reservoir sandstone such as grain size, sorting, pore space and alignment, clay content and cement type to make both a determination of ambient permeability and an estimation of how that permeability may be resolved at depth with overburden pressure. This is most commonly performed on Cuttings samples and thus an average is given in mDft of mDm.

Challenger Geological Services will require a minimum of 30g per cuttings interval to provide this analysis.

In addition, in appropriate situations, formation determinations can be made with this analysis.

For this service a Final Report with tabulated data and photographic representations will be provided to the client.

pXRF (X-Ray Fluorescence) Analysis

Challenger Geological Services can provide a portable XRF service using an Olympus Vanta pXRF handheld scanner. This can be performed on a variety of samples, including Core, Ditch Cuttings, soil and fluids. pXRF is non destructive and a relatively quick form of analysis that is good at accumulating detailed elemental data in a short timeframe. The data can be used in a simple form to make basic assays of single element concentrations such as Rare Earths or Base metals. It can also be used to construct Elemental “fingerprints” of the samples scanned, which can lead to broader interpretive uses such as determining formation changes and Elemental correlations across wells.

The picture to the right illustrates the Elemental Fingerprinting that can be achieved using pXRF analysis translated into a graphical interface. When this is done it is easy to visually resolve Elemental variance within well samples, see both formation changes and depositional cycles.

The results are returned as tabulated data and Challenger Geological Services provides them as an Excel spreadsheet.