Quantifying the effect of squirt flow dispersion from compliant clay porosity in clay bearing sandstones

Compliant porosity in the form of cracks is known to cause significant attenuation and velocity dispersion through pore pressure gradients and consequent relaxation, dubbed squirt flow. Squirt flow from cracks vanish at high confining stress due to crack closing. Studies on clay bearing sandstones, however, show high attenuation and velocity dispersion remaining at high confining stress.

Such dispersion is proposed to be caused by pressure gradients induced by compliant porosity within clay inclusions. By modeling the response of two extreme systems we quantify the possible effects of such clay-squirt flow on the bulk modulus of a clay bearing sandstone. The predicted magnitude of the clay-squirt effect on the bulk modulus is compared with experimental data.

The clay-squirt effect is found to possibly account for a significant portion of the deviances from Gassmann fluid substitution in claybearing sandstones.