Shale Reservoirs North America

Understanding the similarities and differences in shales is key to optimized exploitation. Therefore the primary objective of this project is to provide operators with measured geological, petrophysical, geomechanical, geochemical, and production properties of numerous shales in order to improve their formation evaluation and to optimize stimulation and production.

This project consists of the characterization and evaluation of numerous conventional cores taken from multiple shale formations. Shale reservoirs are being analyzed for their geological, petrophysical, geomechanical, geochemical, and production properties. These data are integrated with well logs, stimulation designs, and production test information.

The resulting database and complete case histories will provide operators with valuable information not only on their own wells in a particular play, but also on other operator's wells in other shale formations. The project will be focused on evaluating numerous different shales in a variety of North American basins.

Specific project objectives include:

• Geologically characterize the cored shales in terms of depositional facies, environment of deposition, and rock types
• Characterize and classify shales in terms of their lithology, mineralogy, clay content, clay types, and pore structure including macro and micro-fractures
• Measure and characterize the various petrophysical properties
• Measure and characterize the organic content of shales in terms of total organic content (TOC), Rock Eval, pyrolysis, and vitrinite reflectance
• Determine the gas desorption associated with kerogen and adsorption isotherm for gas storage capacity as a function of reservoir pressure
• Measure and profile the key geomechanical properties
• Core-log calibration of open-hole logs for the development of petrophysical models to determine shale properties
• Integrate the core data with well logs, fracture stimulation techniques, and production test results to aid companies in their evaluation and exploitation of shale reservoirs
• Utilize and integrate the core and production data to perform production forecasts
• Develop relationships from the database to aid in evaluating and comparing various shale rock properties
• Develop a "Shale Rock Catalog" in order to aid in the evaluation of shale properties from drill cuttings and logs
• Provide operators with a searchable database for various shales and their associated properties that can be used as analogs to aid in the appraisal and exploitation of "unknown or newly discovered" shales
• Available in RAPIDLink™

* In progress and available for participation