Petrophysical Interpretation of the Oxfordian Smackover Formation Grainstone Unit in Little Cedar Creek Field, Conecuh County, Southwestern Alabama

A petrophysical study of the upper grainstone/packstone reservoir of the Oxfordian Smackover Formation in Little Cedar Creek Field was conducted, integrating core description, thin section analysis, log interpretation and cathodoluminescense to characterize controls on oil production in the upper reservoir. Little Cedar Creek Field produces approximately 2.4 million barrels (bbls) of oil annually and is currently in secondary recovery. By analyzing petrophysical characteristics such as porosity and pore type and correlating them to facies changes, better predictions can be made to optimize secondary recovery. The diagenetic history of the ooid-peloid grainstone records six separate events. Early marine phreatic dogtooth sparry rim cement helped create the framework that allowed it to maintain a good portion of its depositional porosity as it underwent subsequent compaction, dissolution and cementation events. The most common porosity types are vuggy, oomoldic and intercrystalline. The Smackover Formation ooid-peloid grainstone/packstone unit consists of multiple alternating ooid-peloid grainstone and peloid packstone/wackestone facies with varying porosity types. The most common types are oomoldic and vuggy with a range of preserved intergranular porosity. Porosity in the grainstone facies averages 17% and 5.6% in the packstone/wackestone facies. The number of facies changes within the upper reservoir does not play a significant role in controlling well production. Facies changes are too thin to be identifiable utilizing well logs alone, although neutron and density well logs do trace a close relationship between log values and core plug analysis values of porosity. Core reports indicate that porosity and permeability correlate strongly with pore size and facies. Areas with thicker accumulations of grainstone facies have higher porosity and permeability values and have higher oil production. Isopach maps of the cumulative grainstone facies indicate thick build-ups parallel to strike for the formation, consistent with a shoal environment. The strongest predictor of well production is the cumulative thickness of grainstone facies within the grainstone/packstone unit of the Smackover Formation. The grainstone is thickest in the southwest part of the field and pinches out updip in the northwest. Secondary recovery gas injection would be most effective if applied in the southwestern portion of the field because it could effectively sweep the oil updip towards the stratigraphic trap

La injusticia apoyada por el justo

From the consideration of mercy as compassion for another's misery S. Thomas Aquinas deduces that one feels sympathy for this misery insofar as one considers it to be one's own. By mercy we mean sickness, the lack of material means, and in general all that degrades human dignity. The contribution to a legislation that favours divorce or abortion signifies contributing to the degradation of society by destroying the principIe on which rests the family, the education of man himself, and the respect that human life of itself deserves. Once the objective idea of good has been lost, man commences to deny his own right to life. Having abandoned mercy towards his neighbour, man loses his human condition and becomes incapable of love even towards himself. This loss makes itself felt at once in the injustice of a society that refuses to acknowledge an ordinatio rationis, and this soeiety will see itself threatened by disorder in its very foundations. Once the sense of mercy among men has be en lost, their relations beeome dominated by the exaltation of sex and the approval of individual violence as a legitimate means of redressing wrongs or simply of satisfying one's desires. Society finds itself ineapable of putting an end to these exeesses because it laeks a legitimate reason. Individual violence can in turn give rise to legal violence. For this reason it is unlawful to partieipate in the legalization of something that, through laek of goodness, ought to be eondemned. Neither respeet for the opinion of others, nor the majority view, nor the desire to give legal expression to something which, though unaeeeptable, may in this manner be better controlled, can permit aman who seeks justice to take part in any way in the establishing of a law that is in essenee unjust. And this is so not out of any eonsideration of self-proteetion, always an egóistic motive, but rather for altruistic reasons. One's attitude of resistance should be based on the demands made by one's own conseience not to go against the dictates of reason, and on the demands of justice with respeet to one's neighbour. If merey towards one's neighbour is a refleetion of that love whieh man of his nature feels towards himself, then the just man can never desire something for his fellow (although it be only for reasons of eonvenienee) if he considers it essentially bad for himself. And so neither may he contribute in any way to the legalization of an injustice of this kind

El derecho fundamental del fiel a ser juzgado conforme a derecho.

Material incluido en el volumen especial de la revista del Instituto Martín de Azpilcueta, Universidad de Navarra : Ius Canonicum (1999), en honor de Javier Hervada