Short Course 7
Sunday, 23 July 2017
Who Should Attend
Geologist, Petrophysicist, Geophysicist, Earth Modeler, Drilling Engineer, Reservoir Engineer, Completion Engineer, and Production Engineer
Course Content
Unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs, particularly shale-oil and shale-gas, are the future of the oil industry. It toke the oil industry about 160 years, since the first oil well in the USA was drilled in 1859, to master oil production from conventional reservoirs. Even after 160 years of accumulated experience with conventional reservoirs, the oil industry still faces new challenges in deep water drilling, completion, and enhanced oil recovery from heavy oil carbonates, tar sands, and tight gas sands.
On the other hand exploration, production and development of unconventional shale-gas and shale-oil started only about thirteen years ago, when George P. Mitchell in 2003 asked his engineers to extract natural gas from shale-gas reservoirs. It took 5 more years until other E&P companies took interest in shale-gas and shale-oil exploration.
Although shale makes up about two thirds of the stratigraphic column, more than the siliciclastics and carbonates combined, shale has been the least studied sedimentary rocks until very recently. Shale was always regarded as a cap-rock “Seal” in the petroleum system. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s many studies on the evaluation of shale as a source rock were published. Starting on 2008 we saw noticeable interest in organic-rich shales, both shale-oil and shale-gas, as viable hydrocarbon reservoirs. Since then laterally thousands of research papers and articles were published on different aspects of shale-oil and shale-gas asset development techniques. All that is done to understand shale reservoirs and to increase drilling, completion, stimulation, and hydrocarbon production efficiencies from unconventional reservoirs.
Shales in many ways have been neglected and misunderstood for a long time. Many of the misconceptions about shale reservoirs still persist through the oil community. However, oil companies and governments around the globe are investing in unconventional oil resource plays. Due to the importance of these energy resources, this class will address some of these misconceptions.
The first part of the class is designed to give attendees a better understanding of unconventional “shale” hydrocarbon reservoirs, based on the geology, detailed mineralogy, organic-richness, and hydrocarbon content. Finally, the class will address with examples various ways for collaboration between petrophysicists and other disciplines to achieve efficient unconventional asset development through better understanding of lateral landing selection and proper completion optimization designs.
Petrophysics is an integral part of the detail unconventional reservoir characterization. It also serves as the core for integration and collaboration of many disciplines such as geology, geophysics, geochemistry, and earth modeling as well as drilling, completion, reservoir stimulation and production engineering. The attendees will be exposed to the data requirements, recent lab analysis techniques, and the proper procedures to achieve detailed petrophysical reservoir characterization.
- Defining Unconventional Reservoirs (UCR) -- Define your target
- What is SHALE
- Shale Heterogeneity
- What makes an unconventional reservoir
- Clays (Mineralogy, Chemistry, Physical Properties, SEM)
- Organic Matter (type, amount, and maturity level)
- Unconventional Reservoir Conceptualization
- Matrix Porosity
- Organic Porosity
- Unconventional Reservoir Petrophysical Characterization
- Shale Laboratory Testing
- UCR Petrophysical Analyses
- Facies Identification
- Clay Typing
- Dynamic rock mechanics
- Rock Physics for seismic ties
- Pay zone characterization
- New and emerging technologies:
- Digital Rock Physics
- Core GR and X-CT scanning
- SEM/EDS
- NMR logging
- Dielectric logging
- Multi-array acoustic image logs
- Summary & Conclusions