Applications of Wellsite Chemostratigraphy

Abstract

Chemostratigraphy was first used at wellsite in the early 2000s but it is rather unfortunate that very little material has been published on the subject, with most articles taking the form of very short papers or conference abstracts. In spite of this, wellsite chemostratigraphy is becoming increasingly popular, as it can be used to provide lithology/bulk mineralogy predictions, stratigraphic control whilst drilling and to aid the placement of casing points, coring points and total depth (TD). Arguably, the most commonly used application, however, is to assist the geosteering/well trajectory monitoring of horizontal-subhorizontal wells drilled in structurally complex plays. Major advances in XRF technology over the last 15 years, particularly with respect to benchtop ED-XRF instruments, has resulted in the ability to generate high quality inorganic geochemical data in ‘near real time’.