Journal of Conference Abstracts

Digital Petrography: Poroperm Modelling and Quantitative Diagenesis in Carbonates

Francis Witkowski (francis@gl.rhbnc.ac.uk)¹, Peter Gutteridge (pete@CaCO3.demon.co.uk)², Andrew Horbury (ahorbury@hotmail.com)² & Norman Oxtoby (oxtoby@dial.pipex.com)³

¹ Royal Holloway College, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK

² Cambridge Carbonates Ltd, 11, Newcastle Drive, The Park, Nottingham NG7 1AA, UK

³ fia, 41, Oaken Lane, Claygate, Surrey KT10 0RG, UK

Recent advances in digital image acquisition technology permit significant gains in the efficiency of processing and analyzing ppl and CL images of carbonates in thin sections. Using this technology, we have developed a tool that improves our ability to characterize and understand both porosity and diagenetic systems, as follows:

Porosity: the technique provides statistically reliable measurements of absolute porosity%, pore sizes and pore size distribution, pore roughness and pore connectivity indices.

Cements: Cement zones identified using CL can be broken out precisely and cement areas quantified exactly for large areas of the thin section and for complex cement morphologies.

We acknowledge the financial support of Shell International Exploration and Production (SIEP), Petro-Canada Oil and Gas and BG plc in developing this technique.

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