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SCPST03

Clay Minerals and Their Effect on the  Electrical Behavior of Shaly Sands

Instructor: E.C. Thomas
Date: June 17, 2008
Max. Attendance: 75 Participants
Course Fee: $750

Venue: TBA

This short course will cover the fundamentals of the following topics:

• The structure of clay minerals
• The origin of cation exchange capacity in clay minerals
• Understanding how the cation exchange properties of clay minerals alters the conductivity of brine saturated shaly sands
• Development of the Waxman-Smits equation as a model to compute water saturation when cores and their analyses are not available
• Bound water and how it is measured, including comparison to NMR
• Handling laminated shaly sands using the Thomas-Stieber approach to derive porosity and water saturation of the sand laminae
• Advantages of having horizontal and vertical resistivity measurements for the analysis of shaly sands

E.C. Thomas is a consulting petrophysicist and owner of Bayou Petrophysics since 1999. E.C. retired from Shell E&P Technology Company as a Petrophysical Advisor where he actively pursued research and field evaluation topics in the area of Petrophysics for over 32 years. E.C.‘s academic background includes a BS in Chemistry from LSU, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University, and a year of postdoctoral research in Physical Chemistry at Princeton University.

E.C.'s professional career interests and publications have spanned the entire field of formation evaluation/reservoir characterization, i.e., Petrophysics  He also authored and taught  basic, intermediate and advanced Petrophysics Courses for 7+ years at Shell's Training Center. E.C. has served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer promoting the use of Logging While Drilling before it was an accepted methodology, chaired several SPE events such as the 1998 Archie Conference, and wrote a biographical sketch of Gus Archie for The Log Analyst to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Archie Equation. In June 2000 the SPWLA presented to E.C. its Distinguished Technical Achievement Award, and in June 2002 E.C. served as keynote speaker for the Houston Chapter of SPWLA Symposium on Shaly Sand Evaluation. In June 2004, SPWLA awarded E.C. it's highest honor, the Gold Medal Award for Technical Achievement. In June 2005, E.C. presented the keynote address for the annual SPWLA Symposium. In 2006 E.C. was an invited speaker at the SPWLA Topical Conference on Thin Bed Analysis and in 2007 E.C. was the Keynote Speaker for the SPWLA/SCA Topical Conference on Core-Log Integration, as well as the Keynote Speaker for the SPE ATW in Cyprus on Advanced Formation Testing and Sampling. E.C. serves as an associate editor for Petrophysics and as a technical reviewer for SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering.

Currently E.C. consults half-time for Shell E&P Research and provides technical training in shaly sand analysis and general consulting in other areas of Petrophysics. Also E.C. serves as an advisor to the research staff of the Petroleum Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin.