Petrophysics for Thinly Bedded Formations
Monday, 17 November 2025 | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
| Instructor | Rick Aldred (Consultant Petrophysicist) |
| Language | English |
| Duration | 1-day |
Course Description
Thinly bedded formations occur in many different depositional environments are often very good producing reservoirs. However, they are sometimes overlooked because of low resistivity measurements and are difficult to evaluate when they have been identified.
This short course is intended for petrophysicists interpreting log, core and pressure data from the various types of low resistivity, thinly bedded and laminated sequences. The goal of the course is to cover all aspects of thin bed petrophysics and to train the attendees to select and use the best interpretation technique possible, based on the known characteristics of the formation and the data available.
Time will be spent discussing laminated shaly sand reservoirs, but other thin beds will also be examined, including layers of different types of clean sands and thin beds in carbonates.
The tri-axial resistivity tools will be investigated along with methods for interpreting data from these tools.
More recent techniques will also be presented. These include attempts to identify electrical anisotropy from conventional measurements in mature fields where no vertical resistivities have been measured, using a technique which has already proved useful in identifying and quantifying intervals of bypassed pay. Another technique addresses complex thin bed problems where multiple rock types are present, using a combination of logs, core data and saturation height functions to determine the rock types present and hydrocarbon content.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will:
- Understand the issues surrounding the petrophysical interpretation of thin beds.
- Learn about the effects of thin beds on electrical properties and other core measurements.
- Assess conventional interpretation techniques using shaly sand Sw equations.
- High-resolution petrophysical modelling and image based petrophysics.
- Explore Electrical Anisotropy, how it is measured, data quality, and measurement problems.
- Look at the interpretation techniques available using horizontal and vertical resistivities, including theLaminated Shaly Sand Analysis (LSSA).
- Look at the options available when no vertical resistivities have been measured.
- Find out how to determine electrical anisotropy from conventional measurements in mature fields.
- An introduction to low-resolution petrophysical modelling, its benefits and limitations.
- Using Saturation Height Functions in thinly bedded reservoirs.
- Using NMR results with capillary pressure data in thin beds with multi-pore systems.
- Results reporting in thin beds.
- Petrophysical uncertainty and the value of information.
- Understanding why conventional techniques and high-resolution modelling have high uncertainty, while LSSA and other low-resolution techniques have low uncertainty.
- How to justify your next data acquisition program.
Participants' Profile
The course is designed for petrophysicists looking at thin bed problems who seek to get the most out of the dataavailable, and for people who are evaluating low resistivity formations and want to understand the value ofinformation to justify a data acquisition program.
About the Instructor
Rick Aldred is a consultant petrophysicist with 45 years’ industry experience, 43 of those involved with petrophysics. He spent 15 years with operating E&P companies, 10 years with logging companies, providing consulting services and training for their customers, 10 years with a software company working in R&D, customer liaison, building advanced interpretation modules and providing training courses for customers and support staff, followed by 10 years as an independent consultant providing interpretation services and training courses.
He has worked in Europe, North Africa, The Middle East, East and South-East Asia and Australia, and given presentations and training courses in many other parts of the world.
His special interests include integrating different data types, complex heterogeneous formations, applying petrophysical techniques in mining, CCS and other non-O&G applications, and quantifying petrophysical uncertainty.
