Marine and Petroleum Geology 58 (2014) 331e338

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Marine and Petroleum Geology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpetgeo

Logging-while-drilling and wireline velocities: Site NGHP-01-10,

KrishnaeGodavari Basin, India
P. Jaiswal a, *, S. Al-Bulushi a, P. Dewangan b
a
b

Boone Pickens School of Geology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA
CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa 403004, India

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 1 December 2013
Received in revised form
5 May 2014
Accepted 11 May 2014
Available online 21 May 2014

At Site NGHP-01-10, KrishnaeGodavari Basin, India, the downhole wireline logging tool measured higher
porosity and sonic velocities in gas hydrate-bearing sediments compared to the logging-while-drilling
(LWD) acquired data in two closely spaced wells (~10 m). Using a rock physics model that assumes
random fractures in unconsolidated sediments using HashineShtrikman bounds, we show that difference in physical properties could be due to intra-site difference in the distribution and pattern of
hydrate-lled fractures rather than differences in the volume of gas hydrate. Our fracture-inclusive
model suggests that between the two holes the porosity and hydrate saturation of the background
sediments is similar while porosity and hydrate saturation of the fracture systems change considerably,
resulting in the change of the sonic log responses. Relative changes in hydrate saturation between
sediments and fractures at 90 m below the sea oor (mbsf) depth (at a prominent seismic horizon),
suggests that fracture-lling hydrate could have partly originated as pore-lling material in the sediments and grew as fracture-lling material as a result of uid ow. The volume fracture prole of hydrate
(fracture porosity
fracture saturation) between the two holes further suggests that the higher concentration of fractures in the wireline hole may not be a natural in-situ condition but rather a manifestation of the drilling compounded with time lapse in data recording between the LWD and wireline
log data. Frequently reported, worldwide, intra-site variability in hydrate saturation from LWD and
wireline logs in close proximity could be more related to interpretative methods than actual geologic
variability.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Gas hydrate
Fracture
Rock-physics

1. Introduction
Gas hydrate is an ice-like material made up of gas (mostly
methane) and water stable under a narrow range of pressure (P)
and temperature (T) conditions. In marine environments, it exists
within top few hundred meters of the seaoor. In theory, hydrate
can form wherever light hydrocarbon gases saturate pore waters
between the seaoor and the base of the gas hydrate stability zone.
Hydrate forms from the pore water when the concentration of the
dissolved gas exceeds its solubility. Hydrate forms condensed gas
reservoirs: 1 m3 of hydrate contains ~164 m3 gas at surface P and T
conditions (Sloan and Koh, 2007). Pressure e temperature conditions along continental margins favor presence of gas hydrate
(Milkov, 2004). Due to its widespread occurrence, large volumetric
potential, and limited stability conditions, gas hydrate may play a

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 405 744 6041; fax: 1 405 334 7841.
E-mail address: priyank.jaiswal@okstate.edu (P. Jaiswal).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2014.05.006
0264-8172/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

signicant role in climate change (Gu et al., 2011), seaoor stability

(Brown et al., 2006), and energy security (Boswell and Collett,
2011).
One of the most effective approaches to assess gas hydrate resources is through drilling and the analysis of downhole well log
data. Downhole logging is similar to surface geophysical techniques, but with very limited survey aperture due to close source
and receiver spacing. There are two methods of logging: wireline
logging (WL) and logging-while-drilling (LWD) The WL method has
been in practice since the early 1900's. In WL logging an assembly of
tools is lowered into a borehole, the tools acquire and store data,
the time-lapse between drilling and WL data recording can be
several tens of hours. The LWD method was introduced in part to
overcome the delay in the time between drilling and data measurement. Also decisions on well trajectory could be made based on
real-time measurements. In general, in a LWD assembly, three accelerometers (for inclination) and three magnetometers (for azimuth) are orthogonally mounted within the tool assembly. These
directional sensors along with other sensors (density, neutron

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P. Jaiswal et al. / Marine and Petroleum Geology 58 (2014) 331e338

porosity, resistivity, acoustic, etc.) are connected to a mud-pulse

unit which converts and sends data to surface using mud pulse
telemetry (i.e., by varying the drilling uid (mud) pressure). The
pressure uctuations are decoded on surface. After the LWD tools
are retrieved the onboard tool memory is down loaded. Although
the time-lapse in the WL methods can lead to the hole degradation,
the biggest advantage of WL logging is that the core hole can be
surveyed with wireline tools.
Gas hydrate scientic drilling along the Indian continental
margins was conducted in 2007 through a joint venture between
United States Geological Survey and Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, India. In the expedition, known as the National Gas
Hydrate Program Expedition 1 (NGHP-01), coring, LWD and WL
logging operations were performed. One of the most comprehensive datasets in the entire NGHP-01 expedition were acquired at
Site NGHP-01-10 (hereafter in this report named Site 10) in the
KrishnaeGodavari (KG) Basin where four holes named 10A through
10D, were established within 20 m of each other for the acquisition
of coring and/or logging data (Collett et al., 2008). At Hole 10B,
which was a dedicated core hole, 128 m of hydrate-lled fractured
sediments were recovered. A total of three pressurized cores were
also recovered from Hole 10B, which were then depressurized at
the surface and yielded gas hydrate saturations ranging from 22 to
24%. Hole 10A (10 m NW of 10B) was dedicated to LWD and is
hereafter referred to as the LWD hole at Site 10. Hole 10D (10 m NW
of Hole 10A) was logged using WL tools and is hereafter referred to
as the WL hole at Site 10. The distribution of gas hydrate appeared
to be highly variable between the Site 10 continuous corehole (Hole
10B) and the LWD hole (Hole A), and the WL log hole (Hole 10D).
Although depressurizing core samples provide most accurate
hydrate estimates, time constraints often limit the number of
pressure core deployments, leading to the increase us of downhole
acquired log data. The goal of this study is to understand the differences in the WL and LWD acquired logs and compare them to
hydrate saturations inferred from pressure-core depressurization
tests. .
In this study, it is proposed that the higher sonic velocities and
porosity values measured in the Site 10 WL hole, in comparison to
those values measured in the LWD hole, may be the result of the
intrinsic variability in hydrate-bearing sediment conditions between the two holes. Differences in LWD and WL derived data,
however, may also be a product of the use of different drilling and
downhole logging technologies. Similar data variability have been
found associated with other gas hydrate drilling projects on the
Cascadia Margin (Goldberg et al., 2008) and in the Ulleang Basin
(Kim et al., 2011), suggesting that this phenomenon might be a
consequence of the drilling and/or logging procedures and
technology.
The nature of gas hydrate distribution, saturation and habit
(grain displacing, pore lling, etc.) at Site 10 is no known for certain.
For example, using Archie equation (which assumes isotropic
sandstone reservoir conditions) and WL resistivity log data, Collett
et al. (2008) estimated ~85% saturation between 27 and 90 m below
the sea oor (mbsf) which was a marked increase over that derived
from X-ray CT measurements by Rees et al. (2011) within the same
interval. Lee and Collett's (2009) velocity modeling with threephase Biot-type equation reduced the estimated hydrate saturation to ~65%, which is still substantially higher than that obtained in
core depressurization tests.
The core from Hole 10B clearly shows fractures (Collett et al.,
2008), which have been implicitly incorporated in the various
reservoir rock models with only limited success. Lee and Collett
(2009) attempted to match compressional- and shear-wave velocities (VP and VS) with a common fracture dip angles, models
assuming a fracture dip of ~84 which yielded Vp estimates similar

to the pressure core estimates, but the Vs derived saturations varied

greatly. Cook et al. (2010) modied Archie's type equation to account for fractures at sub-vertical angles and showed that dipping
fractures can also create electrical anisotropy; saturations derived
from resistivity models were most similar to log derived saturations at an assumed 70e80 fracture dip angle, but had high uncertainties. Similarly, Ghosh et al. (2010) modied a graindisplacing model that assumes gas hydrate occur as oblique ellipsoids to imitate a fracture geometry. Their results were comparable
to the pressure core derived gas hydrate saturations but uncertainties in the saturation estimates were as much as 50% at
various depths, which suggest that the rock physics models used for
hydrate quantication at Site 10 may need to be revisited.
Given the differences in the physics of WL and LWD measurements, it is desirable to understand which method is more reliable
for gas hydrate quantication. In this paper, we show that both
methods yield similar estimates of gas hydrate saturations,
providing the rock physics models are able to account for the
changes in sediment properties that result from drilling. It is expected that drilling in unconsolidated sediments will disturb the
formation and possibly create fractures. Because fractures have
higher permeability than the surrounding often clay-rich marine
sediments, uid ow along fractures tend to allow for the accumulation of hydrate over time (Bhatnagar et al., 2007). In this study,
this becomes relevant if the time-lapse between drilling and WL
logging is long enough to re-distribute gas hydrate within the
stability zone and has a measureable effect on measured sonic
velocities. We present evidence at Site 10 this could indeed be the
case. Although we are not refuting the possibility of previous
models, a more thorough, both experimental and numerical
investigation using additional data from other sites is needed for
conrmation.
Most of the models used to characterize Site 10, whether
anisotropic or isotropic models, are exclusive, in that gas hydrate is
considered to be either present only in fractures or only in the
surrounding sediments. We propose that at Site 10, gas hydrate is
present in both fractures and in the surrounding sediments. The
impetus for our proposal comes from observation made by Collett
et al. (2008) in the NGHP-10B-18Y pressure core, in which the
bulk of the gas hydrate in this core must be in a more distributed
form that is below the resolution of the X-ray images, or indeed the
naked eye. Collett et al. (2008) further speculated that disseminated hydrate could have displaced pore water and sediment
grains, which potentially contributed to the observed increase in
elastic velocities. We also suggest that the fracture-driven anisotropy at Site 10 may not be as strong as previously imagined; equalarea lower-hemisphere projection of fractures in Hole 10A from
Cook et al. (2010) and Hole 10B from Rees et al. (2011) suggest a
relatively random fracture orientation.
This paper is organized as follows. We rst present a model
where fractures can be incorporated in the rock-physics model by
using a mixing law relationship that follows the HashineShtrikman
(HS) bounds (Wang, 2001). The biggest advantage of this model is
its exibility e it allows accounting for the density and connectivity
of fractures and simultaneous placement of hydrate in sediments
(as either pore-lling or grain displacement substances) and fractures. Further, the model automatically assumes random fractures
with no bearing on system anisotropy. Next, using this model, we
show that the hydrate saturations estimated from pressure-core
depressurization test can be accounted for in the imaged fractures and surrounding sediments as estimated from the VP and VS
logs in the WL logged hole at Site 10. Following this, we show that
maintaining the same gas hydrate saturations and sediment
porosity (i.e., not the fractures) portion of LWD logged hole, the
lower WL acquired VP can be explained by changing the fracture

P. Jaiswal et al. / Marine and Petroleum Geology 58 (2014) 331e338

connectivity and fracture porosity. Finally, we discuss the global

applicability of this model.
2. Method
Estimating elastic velocities in porous rocks involves reconstructing elastic moduli of dry matrix and pore uid separately
followed by their comparison through the use of Gassman's relationships (Chand et al., 2004). Nur et al. (1991) showed that at
high effective pressures, clean (i.e., low clay content) sandstones
have a distinct relation between bulk porosity and effective moduli;
the trend is linear at the arithmetic mean between pure quartz
(zero porosity) and sand assemblage at critical porosity. As the rock
becomes compositionally complex, various mineral mixtures
deform differently in response to the same seismic stress and the
relation between the bulk porosity and the effective moduli becomes non-linear. For mixing various sediment grains in a Hashintype assemblage (Hashin and Shtrikman, 1963), in which a pore
topology undergoes uniform deformation, two end-member trajectories in the moduluseporosity plane connecting zero and critical porosity have been proposed. Assemblage resembling a soft

2
K D=I

6X
4
3

i1

Zmin;max

31
fi
4
Ki Gmin=max
3

7
5

4
G
;
3 min=max

"
GD=I

333

Stern et al., 2004). Second, the uids and hydrate could be separate.
In either case, under seismic stress, the volume change of the
hydrate-lled part of the fracture will be limited by the presence of
the gas hydrate. Therefore the hydrate-lled part of the fractures
can be considered as a stiffer component. When the hydrate-lled
fractures are disconnected (Fig. 1a), they act like a stiffer core and
the scenario can be described using the lower HS bound. Similarly,
when hydrate-lled fractures are interconnected (Fig. 1b), they
could act like a stiffer shell and the scenario can be described using
the modied upper HS bound. The term connected and disconnected are not intended to be indicative of the physical appearance
of the fractures, but rather the manner in which hydrate are present
within the fractures.
Consider a mixture comprising of disconnected/interconnected
hydrate- and brine-lled fractures (annotated D/I) and sediment.
The total porosity of the system (ft) will be the sum of porosity of
the background sediments (fs) and porosity of the fractures (ff). If
f1 e f3 are the volume fractions of the background sediments,
hydrate-lled fractures and brine-lled fractures, the bulk (KD/I)
and Shear (GD/I) moduli of this mixture can be expressed though
the general form of HS bounds (Mavko et al., 2009) as:

#1

3
X

fi

i1

Gi Zmin=max

 Zmin=max
(1)

9Kmin=max 8Gmin=max
1
G
;
6 min=max Kmin=max 2Gmin=max

core encased in a stiff shell follows the modied upper HS bounds

(Gal et al., 1998) and that resembling stiff core encased by soft shell
follow the modied lower HS bounds (Dvorkin and Nur, 1996). We
extend this consideration to mix hydrate-lled fracture and sediment system model. This model assumes that the rock is a combination of background sediments and hydrate-lled fractures
where the background sediments can be described as an
assemblage of random spheres with fully interconnected pores
(Helgerud et al., 1999). It is assumed, the hydrate-lled fractures are
stiffer than the background sediments, which holds even in the
presence of uids in the fractures. Its physical realization can be
understood through fractures that are created by hydrate, when
hydrate tends to be at the interface between uid and sediments
(Jain and Juanes, 2009). Two scenarios can be conceived: First, the
uid can be encased within a hydrate shell (Behseresht et al., 2008;

In Equation (1), Subscripts min and max refer to the minimum

and maximum modulus of the individual minerals or uids that
make up the mixture. For example, the mixture described above is
made up of quartz, clay, hydrate and brine. In Equation (1), Kmin and
Gmin will be 2.37 GPa and 0 GPa corresponding to brine and Kmax
and Gmax will be 36 GPa and 45 GPa corresponding to quartz
(Table 1). VP and VS for the mixture can be expressed as:

D=I
VP

s
K D=I 43GD=I
;

rb

D=I
VP

s
GD=I

rb

(2)

In Equation (2), rb is the bulk density of the system which is

expressed as:

Figure 1. Mixed gas hydrate pore- and fracture-lling models. (a) Disconnected fractures modeled with lower HashineShtrikman (HS) bounds and (b) interconnected fractures
modeled with modied upper HS bounds. In (a) and (b) hydrate is attached to mineral grains and both hydrate and water is present in the fractures.

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P. Jaiswal et al. / Marine and Petroleum Geology 58 (2014) 331e338

Table 1
Parameters used for rock physics modeling.

LWD Frac
Wireline Frac

Density
(g/cc)

Bulk modulus
(Gpa)

Shear modulus
(Gpa)

Clay
Quartz
Hydrates
Water

2.58
2.65
0.91
1.033

21
36
7.7
2.37

7
45
3.2
0



rb 1  ff $rs ff $rf

(3)

In Equation (3) rf is the density of hydrate-lled part of the

fracture and rs is the bulk density of the background sediment
which in turn are calculated as follows:



rf Shf rh 1  Shf rw
rs 1  fs rm fs rpf

LWD
Wireline
Core (depressurization)

60

Depth (msbl)

System
components

LWD total
Wireline total
Core

70

LWD Shs = 15%

LWD Shf = 50%

80

WL Shs = 15%
WL Shf = 30%

90
100
110

LWD Shs = 23%

LWD Shf = 35%

120

WL Shs = 23%
WL Shf = 22%

(4)

In Equation (4), Shf is the hydrate saturation in fracture, rh, rw, rm

and rpf are densities of hydrate, brine, dry matrix of the background
sediment and pore uid of the background sediments respectively.
The pore uid in Equation (4) could be replaced with brine if gas
hydrate is not present in the background sediments. In this case, gas
hydrate are assumed to be present in the background sediments
(say with saturation Shs), depending on whether they have porelling or grain-displacing form, both rm and rpf can be modied
accordingly (Dvorkin et al., 2003; Helgerud et al., 2000). When both
gas hydrate and brine are present in fracture, the volume fractions
of the mixture constituents in terms of ff can be expressed
as,f1 1  ff, f2 ff$Shf, and f3 ff$(1  Shf). When gas hydrate and
brine are separate in the fractures, for modeling stability it becomes
necessary to merge the brine-lled part of the fracture with background sediment. We alter the porosity of the fracture and the
background sediments as fnew
ff  f3 andfnew
fs f3 . Due to
s
f
the unconsolidated nature of the background sediments, their K
and G are always computed using the modied lower HS bounds.
3. Application and results
Due to the physics of wave propagation, unknowns such as fs, ff,
Shf, Shs, the form of hydrate in the background sediments (porelling or load-bearing), and the nature of fracture connectivity
(interconnected vs. disconnected) cannot be directly calculated
from elastic velocities. However, they can be made to serve as input
to a rock physics model where the output is elastic velocities.
Consequently, by changing the inputs and comparing the outputs
the individual input parameters can be iteratively inferred. A robust
rock physics model should be able to incorporate information about
the rock fabric in a very detailed manner for computing the velocities. Such detail information is typically not available; for reasons of simplicity, certain assumptions are made. In our case, we
assume that (a) fs is constant within depth interval from 65 to
140 m below the seaoor (mbsf), and (b) the form of hydrate in
sediment does not change from one borehole to another. The rst
assumption is based on the character of neutron porosity logs
(Fig. 2a) in both the LWD and WL hole, which suggests that the
sediments are fairly uniform with depth at Site 10. Due to a
reasonable agreement with core porosity (Fig. 2a) we use the
neutron porosity as a proxy for ft in both holes.
We start our modeling at the WL hole with fs 10% (90% of total
porosity is due to fractures) and Shs 0 (all of the gas hydrate is in
fractures). Then, we compute VP and VS using Equations (1)e(4) for
the entire depth of the WL hole for both interconnected and

130
140

50
a. Porosity (%)

100 10

20
30
b. Saturation (%)

Figure 2. Model inputs. (a) Porosity (b) Gas Hydrate Saturation. In (a) LWD and
Wireline total porosity (ft) are from the respective neutron logs and shown in red and
blue. Measured porosity from core samples from the wireline hole are shown in black
dots. LWD porosity, which is lower than wireline porosity, appears to be closer to the
in-situ conditions. The fracture porosity (ff) estimated assuming 55% background
porosity (fs), for LWD and wireline is shown in green and black, respectively. In (b),
saturation from core depressurization is shown with solid black dots. The blue and red
lines are input gas hydrate saturations to the model in the wireline and LWD holes
computed as (Shf*ff Shs*fs)/ft, where Shf and Shs are hydrate saturation in fractures
and sediments respectively. The predicted velocities using the model inputs in this
gure are shown in Figure 3. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

disconnected cases; this constitutes a single forward modeling run.

For every forward model run, we compute the error between predicted and log velocities for both interconnected and disconnected
cases in a root-mean-square (RMS) sense as:

ERMS

v
u

2

2
u n
n
VsPi  VsOi
X
X VPPi  VPOi
1u
t

n i1
sP
sS
i1

(5)

In Equation (5), n is the number of downhole log measured data

points (460), superscripts Pi and Oi denote the ith predicted and
observed data point and sP and sS are standard deviations in the VP
and VS logs respectively. Standard deviation implies variations with
respect to the derived mean value. In the VP and VS logs, the mean
could be thought of representing velocity of the background sediment, which is considered to be homogenous in this study, while
the standard deviation can be considered to be perturbations in the
sections physical property due to fractures. Considering individual
logs as independent time series, the WL compressional-wave sonic
log yields a mean velocity of 1.85 km/s and a sP of 74 m/s, the WL
shear-wave sonic log has a mean value of 0.405 km/s and a sS of
64 m/s and the LWD compressional-wave sonic log has a mean
value of 1.715 km/s and a sP of 50 m/s.
Our model (Equations (1)e(4)) is populated in a heuristic
manner. The model inputs are porosities and uid saturations and
the model output are the elastic velocities. The model has four

P. Jaiswal et al. / Marine and Petroleum Geology 58 (2014) 331e338

10D (Wireline)

10A (LWD)

log
Upper HS bound (interconnected)
Lower HS bound (disconnected)
60
70

Depth (msbl)

80
90
100
110
120
130
140

1.5

2 0.2 0.4 0.6 1.5

2
a. Vp (km/s) b. Vs (km/s) c. Vp (km/s)

335

reported to lose strength below 90 mbsf (Collett et al., 2008),

which might be attributed to a change in sediment properties.
Additionally, in the seismic prole from Jaiswal et al. (2012b) a high
amplitude horizon, labeled H2, appears to be cross Site 10 at about
90 mbsf, which likely represent some type of the change in the
physical properties of the sedimentary section. It is possible that
the sediment character, and consequently the mechanical strength,
changes at this depth which has implications on the fracture connectivity assumed in our model.
Within the 65 to 90 mbsf depth interval at Site 10, with fs 55%
and ff ft  55% (Fig. 2a), Shs 15% with hydrate in the loadbearing form and Shf 30%, the WL VP and VS falls to within
74 m/s and 64 m/s, respectively, of the VP and VS simulated with
interconnected fractures (Fig. 3a and b). Within the same depth
interval, the LWD VP also falls to within 50 m/s of the simulated VP
with interconnected fractures (Fig. 3c) and same fs and Shs as the
WL hole but a higher Shf (Fig. 2b). Within the 90 to 135 mbsf depth
interval, with fs 55% and ff ft  55% (Fig. 2a), Shs 23% with
hydrate in a load-bearing form, and Shf 22%, the WL VP and VS falls
to within 74 m/s and 64 m/s, respectively, of VP and VS simulated
with interconnected fractures (Fig. 3a and b). Within the same

10A/D Shs * s
10D
10A

Shf * f

Figure 3. Model outputs. (a) Wireline VP, (b) Wireline VS and (c) LWD VP. In (a), (b) and
(c) the log data are in black, predicted data with disconnected fractures (lower
HashineShtrikman (HS) bound) are in red and predicted with interconnected fracture
(modied upper SH bound) is in green. For individual logs, the mean is shown with a
dashed black line and the standard deviation is shaded in transparent yellow.

input parameters e ff,fs, Shf, and Shs. The ff is computed as ft e fs,

leaving only three independent parameters. In principle, it is
possible to vary the four input parameters such that VP and VS will
independently matched at every depth. We instead aim to adjust
the input parameters such that the LWD and WL elastic velocities
are simultaneously matched (tted at the level of their respective
uncertainties). The only model constrain is the total saturation, Sht,
as measured by pressure core depressurization experiments at
three depths at Site 10: 21% at 88 mbsf to 22% at 97 mbsf to 24% at
118 mbsf (Fig. 2b). Thus, the ultimate goal of modeling exercise is
not only to t the elastic velocities but also to make sure that the
input saturations are consistent with Sht.
It is notable that despite large variation in elastic velocities
(Fig. 3), Sht remains fairly consistent (standard deviation of 3%),
which suggests that observed velocity variations could be due to
factors other than variations in gas hydrate saturations. As previously observed, ft also has very little variation within the borehole
encouraging us to keep the input parameters spatially invariant as
much as possible. While building the model, we manually varied
the input parameters in a trial and error manner, such that
(frShf fsShs)/(fr fs) remains within 3% of Sht at each respective
depth. Any change in our inputs parameters, mainly fs, physically
implies a change in lithology; therefore, we change fs only when
necessary.
We found that by dividing the stratigraphic section into two
units, with the contact between the two units at 90 mbsf, we could
not only t the velocities to within their respective uncertainties
but also honor Sht; with the model parameters remaining constant
at each depth. In the NGHP01 expedition report, however, there
does not appear to be a change in the sediment characteristics at a
depth of 90 mbsf. The LWD Resistivity-At-Bit (RAB) images are

0
10
Volume Fraction (%)
Figure 4. Hydrate volume fraction (saturation
porosity) in the background (dashed),
wireline fractures (blue) and LWD fractures (red). This gure and 2(b) suggest that
although there is minor intra-site variation in gas hydrate saturations between the
wireline and LWD holes, there is a large change in fracture abundance (ff roughly
doubles from LWD to wireline hole) between the two holes. (For interpretation of the
references to color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)

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P. Jaiswal et al. / Marine and Petroleum Geology 58 (2014) 331e338

Core 10D-12E
0 bar
0.0

Resistivity
Deep button avg. (LWD)
Depth
(mbsf)

Core 10D-22E
0 bar
0.0

60
0.1

0.1

0.2

80
0.3

0.4

90

0.5

100

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Section depth (m)

Section depth (m)

0.3

0.2

0.6

120

0.7

0.8

0.8

0.9

0.9

140
1.0

1.0

(ohm-m)

200

Figure 5. Core X-ray scans with LWD resistivity log. The core from high resistivity zone, Hole 10D-12E, shows a higher connectivity in fractures as compare to the core from lower
resistivity zone, Hole 10D-22E. It is possible that hydrate-lled fracture connectivity not only increases elastic velocity but also resistivity. Note the resistivity change at 90 mbsf,
which could be related to a change in sediment character.

interval, the LWD VP falls to within 50 m/s of VP simulated with

fractures in interconnected mode (Fig. 3c) with the same fs and Shs
as the WL model, but a lower Shf (Fig. 2b).
The results can be summarized as follows: (a) fs is spatially
constant (55%), (b) ff is higher in the WL hole (due to a higher ft);
(c) Shs increases from 15% to 23% at 90 mbsf, the increase being
same in both holes; (d) Shf decrease from 50% to 35% at 90 mbsf in
the LWD hole and from 30% to 22% in the WL hole; and (e) the form
of hydrate occurrence (grain displacing) remains same between the
two holes. Another interesting outcome is the hydrate volume
fraction, which is the product of saturation and porosity (Fig. 4), in
the background sediments remains same in both holes and is
within <5% of each other in the fractures, which implies that the
total volume of hydrate between the two holes are fairly similar.
Indicating that the elastic velocity variations between the two holes
may not due to changes in hydrate content but rather due to
changes in the local fracture abundance and connectivity, and also
in the manner hydrate occupy the fractures.
4. Discussion
Consistency between LWD and WL acquired data has been a
long standing research topic (Brie et al., 1998; Goldberg et al., 2003;
Market and Canady, 2006; Tang et al., 2007; Varsamis et al., 2000).
Compared to the WL logging tools, in LWD devices the rst receiver
is closer to the source. As a result, while the WL acquired logs can
see up to 2 to 3 times the borehole diameter, LWD depths of
investigation are limited to within about 1 borehole diameter.
Depending on the scale of drilling-induced-fractures (micro or

larger), which in turn could depend on drilling procedures and on

the rheology of the borehole uids, the LWD and WL tools can yield
highly variable data. Briggs et al. (2004) has shown that in unconsolidated sedimentary sections, LWD measured shear-wave
velocities can be up to 10% lower than WL measured values;
compressional-wave velocities, however should remain nearly
identical. Goldberg et al. (2008) additionally argue that in unconsolidated sediments, LWD can have leaky acoustic modes. In this
study, Figure 2a shows that the WL neutron porosity is higher (by
~10%) than the LWD derived density porosity. Collett et al. (2008)
show that the laboratory-estimated porosity of samples from the
WL core hole closely follow the LWD neutron porosity (Fig. 2a)
derived values, which provides a reason to suspect that the WL data
may not be fully reective of the in-situ conditions. It is hard for us
to argue in favor of any one particular method; however, we have
shown that both LWD and WL logs can yield similar values when
the rock-fabric is properly taken into account.
The value of 55% that we have obtained for fs is the same as
what Daigle and Dugan (2010) obtain as minimum possible
porosity in their ow rate calculation at Site10. Their model assumes that all fractures at Site 10 are hydraulically connected.
However, observing the sub-horizontal hydrate-lled veins that
require pore pressures to be equal to or greater than the vertical
effective stress, they concluded that it is therefore difcult to
generate (all) the observed features by pore occlusion alone. We
argue that even at the LWD hole it is possible that some fractures,
most likely the sub-horizontal set, could be drilling induced. In the
LWD hole, the fracture connectivity could possibly change at
90 mbsf from an interconnected mode above to a disconnected

P. Jaiswal et al. / Marine and Petroleum Geology 58 (2014) 331e338

mode below. A change in connectivity could be responsible for the

change in the observed LWD RAB image character. Fractures in the
WL hole appear to be interconnected throughout the length of the
hole. If sediments in both holes were in the same state prior to
drilling, then it is possible that the delay between drilling and WL
logging could have changed the fracture connectivity.
Gas hydrate saturations in the fractures in the LWD hole area
higher than those calculated in the WL hole above 90 mbsf, and vice
versa for the section below 90 mbsf. If both holes evolved from the
same initial sediment conditions, it is also possible that in the timelag between drilling and the data recording in the WL hole, the
hydrate are redistributed within the newly formed fractures. In
principle, the time-lag in the WL hole allows for hydrate decomposition and re-formation under appropriate pressure and temperature and uid ow conditions (Abay and Svartaas, 2011;
Windmeier and Oellrich, 2013), laboratory and modeling studies
are needed to test this model. Connectivity of the fractures could
also be related to resistivity. We compare the X-ray scans of two
cores from the WL (10D) in Figure 5: Core 10D-12E from the high
resistivity zone (77.8 mbsf) and Core 10D-22E from the low resistivity zone (145.1 mbsf). In the X-ray scans, the fractures appear
as gray-to-white features in an otherwise dark background.
Figure 5 reveal that (a) both cores have high volume percent of
fractures, supporting our model which assumes 15e20% ff (Fig. 2a)
and the core from the higher resistivity zone has a higher fracture
connectivity. A possible caveat to this observation is that coring can
also change the fracture conditions in the recovered cores as they
are brought to the surface; however, in a relative sense, this
degradation should be similar in both of the recovered cores.
Gas hydrate formation and dissociation kinetics are fairly
complicated and have multiple dependencies (Roosta et al., 2013;
Vysniauskas and Bishnoi, 1983). The dynamic models for uids
encased in gas hydrate shells is not fully developed, the stability of
hydrate shells appear to be inverse proportional to the dissolved
methane concentration (Chen et al., 2014). We think that the
interconnected fracture scenario could be associated with periods
of rapid fracture growth where, due to a sudden increase in
permeability and water ow, the saturation of the dissolved
methane can be reduced. It is more likely that in this scenario the
uid will be encased in hydrate shells. The disconnected scenario
could be present in more steady-state conditions of fracture
growth, where uid and hydrate could be existing separately in the
fractures.
Despite the obvious presence of fractures, we have generally
assumed an isotropic rock model in this study. However, we do not
intend to imply that fractures do not create anisotropy, but rather
that in this instance an isotropic model can also explain the data to
a large extent. It is notable though that even at the seismic scale
reasonable models have been obtained with isotropic approximation in the vicinity of Site 10 (Jaiswal et al., 2012a; Riedel et al.,
2011). The rock model that we have presented can easily be
extended into an anisotropic domain by following Bandyopadhyay
(2009). Other variations, such as using Gassmann's substitution to
introduce the brine-lled part of the fracture into a mixture of
hydrate-lled fractures and background sediments are also
possible. Discrimination of these models however require that a
reasonable estimate of fracture patterns and connectivity be made
available a-priori, possibly though high-delity 3D imaging of highresolution seismic data.
5. Conclusions
Using a rock physics model that incorporates randomly oriented
fractures in unconsolidated sediments withe HashineShtrikman
bounds we have compared and contrasted elastic velocities and

337

porosities from Wireline (WL) and logging-while-drilling (LWD)

holes located 10 m apart at Site NGHP-01-10 in KrishnaeGodavari
Basin, India. Results suggest that both the LWD and the WL holes have
comparable sediment porosity and hydrate saturation but different
fracture porosity and connectivity. We conclude that higher VP and
porosity log values in the WL logging hole could due to changes in the
pattern of hydrate-lled fractures rather than a change in hydrate
volume. We propose the fracture patterns in the WL logging hole,
relative to the fracture pattern in the LWD hole, could have evolved as
the product of the time lag between drilling and WL log data acquisition. We contend that a similar argument may hold at other sites
worldwide where intra-site variability in hydrate saturations have
been reported between LWD and WL acquired data.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank those that contributed to the success
of the National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 01 (NGHP01).
NGHP01 was planned and managed through collaboration between
the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) under the Ministry
of Petroleum and Natural Gas (India), the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS), and the Consortium for Scientic Methane Hydrate Investigations (CSMHI) led by Overseas Drilling Limited (ODL) and
FUGRO McClelland Marine Geosciences (FUGRO). The platform for
the drilling operation was the research drill ship JOIDES Resolution,
operated by ODL. Much of the drilling/coring equipment used was
provided by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) through
a loan agreement with the US National Science Foundation. Wireline pressure coring systems and supporting laboratories were
provided by IODP/Texas A&M University (TAMU), FUGRO, USGS,
U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) and HYACINTH/GeoTek.
Downhole logging operational and technical support was provided
by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University. The nancial support for the NGHP01, from the Oil Industry
Development Board, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd., GAIL
(India) Ltd. and Oil India Ltd. is gratefully acknowledged. We also
acknowledge the support extended by all the participating organizations of the NGHP: MoP&NG, DGH, ONGC, GAIL, OIL, NIO, NIOT,
and RIL. Jack Dvorkin, Stanford University, was very vital in our
understanding of rock physics. We also thank Ann Cook, Ohio State
University, for her thoughts. This is Boone Pickens School of Geology, Oklahoma State University's contribution number 2014-12.
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