DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 19 February 2026 have been fully considered. Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11, 13, 15-20, and 22 are pending. Claims 1-2, 9, and 11 have been amended. Claims 3, 10, 12, 14, 21, and 23 are canceled.
Applicant’s efforts to address claim objections are satisfactory, therefore all objections to the claims are withdrawn.
Applicant’s efforts to address the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) are satisfactory, therefore all 112(b) rejections are withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments regarding the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been considered.
Applicant argues that the prior art does not suggest inferring petroleum capacity and permeability as a function of 1. degree of occlusion and 2. nodular evaporite deposit volume per unit volume, derived from core image analysis. Furthermore, Applicant argues that Ganz does not suggest the limitations of the amended claims.
These arguments apply to the amended claims, since the previous set of claims did not recite these limitations. The amendments have necessitated new grounds of rejection; see 103 rejections below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11, 13, and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao (“Diagenetic facies classification and characterization of a high-temperature and high-pressure tight gas sandstone reservoir: A case study in the Ledong area, Yinggehai Basin”) in view of Pattnaik (US 20210090239 A1) and Mezghani (US 20170286802 A1) and Al-Nasser (US 20210225070 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, Zhao discloses a method comprising:
imaging a core sample taken from a portion of a subterranean formation to obtain a two-dimensional (2D) formation image (Fig. 2, images of core samples of Huangliu Formation in the Ledong area; Section 3.1 and 3.2.1(a), thin sections of core samples are taken and imaged; the images are 2D);
analyzing the 2D formation image to identify one or more nodular evaporite deposits in the core sample (Sections 3.2.1(f)-(h) discuss creating and analyzing images of the thin sections, and at least Figs. 5, 7, 9, and 12 show analysis of these thin section images; Fig. 5 identifies a nodular evaporite deposit, see “Cal” for calcite);
determining one or more deposit characteristics for each of the one or more nodular evaporite deposits, the one or more deposit characteristics comprising a vertical depth relative to the subterranean formation (see for example description below Fig. 5: each of the images has an associated depth within the formation; see also Pg. 3, second paragraph under 2. Geological setting, discussing that the Ledong area has a burial depth over 4000 m. This clarifies that the depth considered is depth in the formation from the surface); and
classifying the core sample into at least one diagenetic rock facies (Fig. 7 classifies thin sections into different diagenetic facies; Section 4.3 classifies thin sections into diagenetic facies; a sample is classified as DFT-I in Fig. 16).
Zhao does not explicitly disclose the use of a second set of one or more processors implemented at a computer system to perform the above functions on the 2D formation image, however it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to do so and to apply the computer system for any other processing function because using a general-purpose computer enables functions to be performed autonomously.
Zhao does not explicitly disclose classifying the core sample into a diagenetic rock facies based on a number of the one or more nodular evaporite deposits per unit volume. However, Zhao determines porosity (Tables 1 and 3; Section 3.2.2, thin section analysis used to quantify compaction, cementation, and dissolution of the diagenetic types, where these parameters quantify change in porosity due to among other things cementation of deposits) which represents void volume per unit volume in a material. Since nodular evaporite deposits fill voids, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to account for the number of the one or more nodular evaporite deposits per unit volume when calculating porosity, and then use porosity to classify the portion of the subterranean formation into a diagenetic rock facies (thus making the classification “based on” the evaporite number density).
Furthermore, one of ordinary skill in the art practicing Zhao would conclude that the one or more nodular evaporite deposits per unit volume determine a diagenetic imprint on reservoir capacity and performance (i.e. are examples of physical and chemical changes to sediments as they are buried, and that they have an impact on reservoir capacity and performance. Note from Pg. 15, Section 5.3, column 2: “Cementation represents a process of physical-chemical and biochemical precipitation in the intergranular pore water, resulting in intergranular pore volume loss and the growth of crystals.” The evaporite deposits would impact things like porosity and permeability and thus reservoir capacity and performance).
Zhao does not explicitly disclose:
that the one or more determined deposit characteristics comprise a cross-sectional area, a volume, a roundness index, a degree of occlusion, an overlap of deposits, or any combination thereof;
classifying the portion of the subterranean formation into at least one diagenetic rock facies based on the one or more deposit characteristics of each of the one or more nodular evaporite deposits per unit volume;
Pattnaik discloses a method for determining a microfacies characteristic based on a segmented image using machine-learning (Abstract). The microfacies characteristic may be a distribution of radii or volumes for each grain in the image (¶52; Figs. 8 and 9B), each of which can also be considered a degree of occlusion (they both quantify the amount by which a grain takes up or blocks open space like pores). The facies characteristic is a characteristic which defines the facies of a rock (¶23). While Pattnaik does not disclose finding a cross-sectional area of each grain to determine a rock facies, since doing so would only require multiplying each radius
r
by
π
r
, the radii and cross-sectional areas effectively contain the same information, so one would reasonably expect the same classification results and therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to do so.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Pattnaik with the invention of Zhao by determining a cross-sectional area, a volume, a degree of occlusion, or any combination thereof of each of the one or more nodular evaporite deposits in the image, and to classify the core sample into a diagenetic rock facies based on the one or more characteristics of each of the one or more nodular evaporite deposits per unit volume. By doing so one would incorporate potentially relevant information when determining diagenetic rock facies.
Zhao in view of Pattnaik does not explicitly teach:
imaging, via a first set of one or more processors implemented at a 360° core camera, a core sample of a portion of a subterranean formation to obtain a two- dimensional (2D) formation image, the 360° core camera configured to capture the 2D formation image by at least capturing initial images of a three-dimensional surface of the core sample; and
enhancing, via the second set of one or more processors implemented at the computer system, the 2D formation image using at least one of digital filtering, affine transformations, and image denoising;
Mezghani teaches that core samples provide evidence of a reservoir’s characteristics, and that core description is a fundamental task in reservoir characterization (¶27). Mezghani teaches that typically, core description is performed by a geologist who observes a physical core sample or a high resolution image of a core sample (¶27). Mezghani also teaches that one can obtain a 360º image of a core sample with a camera (¶28: “a 360-degree image can be obtained by rotating the core sample in relation to a fixed camera or moving the camera around the stationary core sample. The 360-degree image can then be processed and treated as a two-dimensional (for example, rectangular) image of a three-dimensional object (the core sample).”). Mezghani also teaches that core images can be pre-processed such as by using noise reduction techniques (¶38). The camera may be a digital camera (¶28), in which case it may have one or more processors.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Mezghani with the invention of Zhao in view of Pattnaik by imaging, via a first set of one or more processors implemented at a 360° core camera, the core sample from the portion of a subterranean formation to obtain the two- dimensional (2D) formation image, the 360° core camera configured to capture the 2D formation image by at least capturing initial images of a three-dimensional surface of the core sample; and enhancing the 2D formation image using at least one of digital filtering, affine transformations, and image denoising. Doing so would enable one to use a known method to classify a reservoir’s characteristics using a processed image of the entire surface of a core sample.
Furthermore, Mezghani teaches that core samples can provide “actual/accurate physical evidence of reservoir formation characteristics, for example…permeability…[and] core samples can also reveal…porosity” (¶27). While Mezghani teaches that the core description is typically performed by a geologist (¶27), Mezghani teaches an automated core description system to automatically predict core properties (¶30).
Petroleum would be held within a rock’s pores, therefore a porosity estimate is a kind of petroleum capacity estimate. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Mezghani with the invention of Zhao in view of Pattnaik by generating, via the second set of one or more processors implemented at the computer system, one or more inferred geophysical attributes based at least in part on the degree of occlusion and the volume of the one or more nodular evaporite deposits per unit volume of the portion of the subterranean formation, the one or more inferred geophysical attributes including at least one of petroleum capacity and permeability. Inferring petroleum capacity and permeability would be useful for characterizing the economic potential of a petroleum reserve. Basing the inference on the degree of occlusion and volume of the one or more nodular evaporate deposits per unit volume of the portion of the subterranean formation would be useful since nodular evaporite deposits may change the porosity and hence permeability of the formation.
Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani does not explicitly teach:
generating, via the second set of one or more processors implemented at the computer system, a 3D model including the portion of the subterranean formation based on at least the at least one diagenetic rock facies and including the one or more inferred geophysical attributes; and
selecting a geographical location of future petroleum exploration and production sites based on the 3D model.
Al-Nasser discloses a system which generates a 3D model of a hydrocarbon reservoir (Abstract). The model is trained using information from multiple hydrocarbon wells (Abstract). A computer system receives porosity logs from well logging tools during a wellbore drilling process (¶12; note that the property of the rocks in a wellbore would be the same as the rock properties of the core sample taken from that same location), and further receives petrophysical and rock typing data from the reservoir and can be used to determine permeability at points in the reservoir (¶12). Such data is used to assign reservoir properties to geological facies across the oilfield (¶12). A machine learning algorithm generates the 3D model based on the information obtained from the hydrocarbon reservoir (¶14). The 3D model enables one to predict dynamic reservoir parameters and enable one to predict efficient production and injection strategies (¶9: “The implementations create a three-dimensional (3D) digital replica of a hydrocarbon reservoir using artificial intelligence to predict changes in key dynamic reservoir parameters (such as dynamic saturation and pressure) between hydrocarbon wells. Further, the implementations enable the prediction of more efficient production and injection strategies across the reservoir surveillance program compared to traditional methods.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Al-Nasser with the invention of Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani by generating, via the second set of one or more processors implemented at the computer system, a 3D model including the portion of the subterranean formation based on at least the at least one diagenetic rock facies and including the one or more inferred geophysical attributes; and
selecting a geographical location of future petroleum exploration and production sites based on the 3D model.
Such a 3D model would aid in hydrocarbon production planning, and basing the 3D model on the at least one diagenetic rock facies and including the one or more inferred geophysical attributes would facilitate generation of a 3D model which is representative of the physical formation being modeled.
Regarding claim 11, the limitations of claim 1 are found in claim 11. Claim 11 also recites a memory and one or more processors coupled to the memory, the memory storing instructions that, when implemented, cause the one or more processors [to] perform the method of claim 1. These limitations are rendered obvious by use of a general-purpose computer to perform steps of the method of claim 1, as argued in the rejection of claim 1 (see rejection of claim 1).
Regarding claims 2 and 13, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claims 1 and 11. Zhao further discloses that the at least one diagenetic rock facies are classified as severely cemented (Section 4.3, DFT-I is tightly cemented; while it is not initially clear what the volume of cement in DFT-I is, Fig. 16 shows that the porosity in DFT-I decreases by 16.5% relative to initial porosity due to calcite cement formation, suggesting that DFT-I is severely cemented, even when accounting for subsequent dissolution. A sample, or portion of the subterranean formation, is classified as DFT-I on the lefthand side of Fig. 16).
Regarding claims 4 and 15, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claims 1 and 11, and further teaches that the portion of the subterranean formation is in situ (the portion of subterranean formation from which the core sample is taken is itself “on site” i.e. in situ). Mezghani further teaches taking a borehole image of a well during or after wellbore drilling (¶29). The borehole image can be considered to be a well log (¶29).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Mezghani with the invention of Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser by causing the formation image to comprise a well log. Doing so would enable one to obtain more information of the portion of the subterranean formation for further analysis.
Regarding claims 5 and 16, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claims 1 and 11, and further teaches that the well log comprises a borehole image log (see rejection of claims 4 and 15).
Regarding claims 6 and 17, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claims 1 and 11. Zhao further discloses that the one or more nodular evaporite deposits comprise a cement nodule (Fig. 5, calcite cement nodules are present, see “Cal” and “Fe-Cal”).
Regarding claims 7 and 18, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claims 6 and 17. Zhao further discloses that the cement nodules comprise a meso-nodule, a macro-nodule, a micro-nodule, or any combination thereof (Section 4.1.2, average grain size is within meso-nodule range, regardless of whether “grain size” reflects radius or diameter).
Regarding claims 8 and 19, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claims 1 and 11. Zhao further discloses that the one or more nodular evaporite deposits comprise calcite (Fig. 5, calcite deposits are present; see “Cal” and “Fe-Cal”).
Regarding claims 9 and 20, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claims 1 and 11. Mezghani further teaches that the well logs can include neutron, gamma ray, sonic, resistivity, or other types of logs (¶42). Noting this, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Mezghani with the invention of Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser by taking one or more geochemical well logs then calibrating the one or more deposit characteristics and the one or more inferred geophysical attributes with data obtained from the geochemical logs. By doing so, one may apply any relevant data from the well logs to make a more informed determination of evaporite deposit and formation characteristics, and thus more accurately characterize the portion of the subterranean formation. It also would have been obvious to cause this to occur by implementing instructions stored on a memory by one or more processors coupled to the memory, as this would enable one to autonomously perform the calibration using a general-purpose computer comprising a memory and a processor.
Claim 22 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao (“Diagenetic facies classification and characterization of a high-temperature and high-pressure tight gas sandstone reservoir: A case study in the Ledong area, Yinggehai Basin”) in view of Pattnaik (US 20210090239 A1) and Mezghani (US 20170286802 A1) and Al-Nasser (US 20210225070 A1), and further in view of Fourno (US 20170074770 A1).
Regarding claim 22, Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser teaches the limitations of claim 1 but not the limitations of claim 22.
Fourno teaches that it is useful to simulate hydrocarbon production by creating a reservoir model which calculates flows and the evolution of pressures within the reservoir (¶6). Fourno teaches that the model may be three-dimensional (¶5). Fourno also teaches that well tests may be used to test the in-situ reservoir flow at a given well, and teaches that the test is useful for calibrating flow/reservoir models used for flow simulations (¶57).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Fourno with the invention of Zhao in view of Pattnaik and Mezghani and Al-Nasser by causing the 3D model to simulate the flow and evolution of pressures in the portion of subterranean formation, then to validate the 3D model by correlating flow of hydrocarbons to the at least one diagenetic rock facies via performing an in-situ reservoir flow test at the subterranean formation. Doing so would enable one to predict the actual production of hydrocarbons as they flow from their source to a well, to test the model against measured flow data, and to improve the model if needed based on the results of the test.
Conclusion
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ETHAN WESLEY EDWARDS
Examiner
Art Unit 2857
/E.W.E./ Examiner, Art Unit 2857
/ANDREW SCHECHTER/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2857
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