Abstract
Since it has been found that the heat flow along a borehole rarely deviates more than 20 percent from the mean equilibrium value and that formation thermal resistivities may vary by as much as an order of magnitude, the profile of temperature gradient versus depth is equivalent to a log of thermal resistivity (T-log). In this work high precision temperature measurements in cased boreholes were used which yielded temperature gradients as high as 140 degrees C/km.Using the equivalence between thermal resistivity and temperature gradients, it has been found that the T-logs are characteristic of the formations in which they were measured with a general negative correlation between thermal resistivity and electrical resistivity, except in coal (and perhaps gas) bearing formations.In one instance, the character of the resistivity log was used to conclude that a horizon deduced from the electrical resistivity log had been mispicked by nearly 100 m.
