Pore-scale network modeling approach to study the impact of Microporosity?s pore space topology

Carbonates present a significantly important area for the research as classical empirical methods applied for sandstones characterization, may easily mislead when applied to carbonates. The impact becomes more protuberant when considering low resistivity pay carbonate formations where Archie's equation may yield higher than actual water saturation values, which, however, underestimate the hydrocarbon reserves. Especially, the bimodal pore sizes distribution makes carbonates extremely complicated for characterization through traditional digital rock physics applications. Unlike sandstone, for a given carbonate sample, it is almost impossible to have pore digital 3D images with minimum elementary volume (REV) to generate a standard pore-network model (PNM) due to the resolution and computational processing power limitations.