Multiscale Geomechanical and Geochemical Studies of Unconventional Shale Reservoirs

Download or read book Multiscale Geomechanical and Geochemical Studies of Unconventional Shale Reservoirs written by Abdulgader Abdullah Alalli and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the advancement of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, unconventional shale reservoirs are now capable of being drilled faster and produced economically at commercial rates. Although these shale resources are massive in size and globally abundant, they are still being produced with low recovery factors (less than 5\% for shale oil and less than 20\% for shale gas). This low recovery could be attributed to an incomplete understanding of the complex intrinsic properties of shale rocks. In this thesis, I focused on investigating the main factors that control pore volume (porosity) and pore-size distribution of different shale reservoirs and how this variability in pore space can be related to measured permeability and well production. I present in this thesis a laboratory workflow highlighting a series of fluid penetration and permeability measurements performed on multiple shale reservoir samples. My approach looks at characterizing and imaging the nanoscale porosity first to better understand the pore space distribution and building upwards in scale through the permeability measurements. Next, I apply my previous findings towards a specific geochemical application setting involving the hydraulic fracturing fluid composition and its effect on the shale permeability. Lastly, understanding how porosity is distributed across the shale matrix and altered during hydraulic fracturing and throughout production is crucial to identify beforehand as it will have a potential impact on enhancing the recovery factors of producing shales.