Gas Productivity Related to Cleat Volumes Derived from Focused Resistivity Tools in Coalbed Methane (CBM) Fields

Abstract

Cleats are critical for coal-bed methane (CBM) production, but operators usually lack a viable method to determine productivity except for costly well tests. Wireline logs, run over the CBM deposits of the Drunkards Wash Unit located in the Uinta Basin of Utah, were used to develop a new method to relate productivity to the cleat volume. The latter is derived from a focused resistivity log and the wellbore-fluid resistivity. Induction tools are unsuitable for this method, because they are dominated by borehole effects in high resistivity coals and low resistivity mud. Moreover, they read too deep to be significantly affected by the substitution of formation fluid by borehole fluid in the cleats on which the method is based. The method was demonstrated by relating cleat volume to CBM gas productivity in 24 wells, an exercise that clearly separated good from poor producers.