The engineering difficulty with carbonates begins with the pore system. In a clastic reservoir, pore geometry is largely inherited from grain size and sorting, and permeability correlates usefully with porosity. In a carbonate, the original fabric is overprinted by dissolution, cementation, dolomitisation, compaction and fracturing, each acting selectively. The result may be a rock with high porosity in isolated vugs that contribute storage but no flow, or low porosity concentrated in well connected touching vugs that flows readily. A porosity-permeability crossplot from a carbonate field is typically a cloud spanning several orders of magnitude, and any correlation drawn through it will misrepresent most of the reservoir.

Rock typing is the response. Grouping rock by pore geometry and dynamic behaviour rather than by bulk properties produces classes within which permeability, capillary pressure and relative permeability are consistent, and the model is then built from those classes. Doing this well requires integrating thin section, capillary pressure, nuclear magnetic resonance and core flood data with log response, and it is the foundation on which everything downstream depends. A carbonate model with a single porosity-permeability transform will fail regardless of how sophisticated the rest of the workflow is.

Recovery is where the consequences appear. Waterflooding a water-wet carbonate can work well. Waterflooding a mixed-wet fractured carbonate frequently produces water while leaving the matrix full of oil, because capillary imbibition, the mechanism that would move water into the matrix, is weak or negative. Recognising which situation applies requires wettability data that is often not acquired, and the difference between the two outcomes can be twenty points of recovery factor. This course treats these questions as central rather than peripheral.

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

• Relate carbonate depositional and diagenetic history to the resulting pore system and reservoir architecture
• Classify carbonate pore types and measure the properties that distinguish them
• Develop rock typing schemes that group rock by dynamic behaviour and apply them in modelling
• Predict permeability in systems where porosity-permeability correlation is weak
• Determine wettability and assess its effect on relative permeability, imbibition and recovery
• Build saturation height models appropriate to complex carbonate pore systems
• Characterise fracture and karst systems and assess their contribution to flow
• Interpret well test and production behaviour in dual porosity carbonate systems
• Evaluate waterflooding, gas injection and enhanced recovery options in carbonate reservoirs
• Design stimulation and production management strategies appropriate to carbonate rock

The course is delivered as an advanced technical programme organised around the properties that make carbonates distinct and the engineering consequences of each. Every subject is developed from the rock system through to its effect on recovery, using core, log, test and production data from carbonate fields. Case material covers Middle Eastern, North African and North American carbonate provinces, including fields where the pore system and wettability were correctly characterised and fields where a clastic approach was applied and recovery suffered. Laboratory data interpretation is addressed throughout, since carbonate work depends heavily on it.

Organisations sending participants to this training will:

• Improve recovery factors in carbonate assets through correctly targeted recovery methods
• Reduce the risk of waterflood projects that produce water without displacing oil
• Build carbonate reservoir models that reproduce dynamic behaviour
• Specify the core and laboratory programmes carbonate evaluation actually requires
• Improve well productivity through stimulation designed for the rock system present
• Strengthen technical capability in carbonate-dominated portfolios

Participants will:

• Work carbonate reservoirs with methods suited to their pore systems
• Build rock typing schemes and defend them against dynamic data
• Assess wettability and its consequences for a recovery scheme
• Interpret carbonate well test and production behaviour correctly
• Select recovery and stimulation methods appropriate to the rock
• Operate as a carbonate specialist within a subsurface team

• Reservoir engineers working on carbonate fields
• Petrophysicists evaluating carbonate reservoirs
• Development and reservoir geologists in carbonate provinces
• Production engineers dealing with carbonate well performance and stimulation
• Simulation engineers modelling carbonate systems
• Reserves evaluators assessing carbonate assets
• Subsurface team leads and technical managers in carbonate-dominated portfolios

Upon successful completion of this training course, delegates will be awarded an official Certificate of Completion issued by the Petroleum Engineers Association (PEA), an ISO 9001:2015 certified training organization. The certificate carries 10 Credits and formally records the total learning hours completed.

Each certificate is signed by the Course Facilitator and the CEO of the Petroleum Engineers Association, and serves as verifiable proof of professional training that delegates can present to employers and professional bodies worldwide.