Comparative Porosity and Pore Structure Assessment in Shales: Measurement Techniques, Influencing Factors and Implications for Reservoir Characterization

Yujie Yuan and Reza Rezaee
Additional contact information
Yujie Yuan: Western Australian School of Mines, Minerals, Energy and Chemical Engineering, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6845, Australia
Reza Rezaee: Western Australian School of Mines, Minerals, Energy and Chemical Engineering, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6845, Australia

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-14

Abstract: Porosity and pore size distribution (PSD) are essential petrophysical parameters controlling permeability and storage capacity in shale gas reservoirs. Various techniques to assess pore structure have been introduced; nevertheless, discrepancies and inconsistencies exist between each of them. This study compares the porosity and PSD in two different shale formations, i.e., the clay-rich Permian Carynginia Formation in the Perth Basin, Western Australia, and the clay-poor Monterey Formation in San Joaquin Basin, USA. Porosity and PSD have been interpreted based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), low-pressure N 2 gas adsorption (LP-N 2 -GA), mercury intrusion capillary pressure (MICP) and helium expansion porosimetry. The results highlight NMR with the advantage of detecting the full-scaled size of pores that are not accessible by MICP, and the ineffective/closed pores occupied by clay bound water (CBW) that are not approachable by other penetration techniques (e.g., helium expansion, low-pressure gas adsorption and MICP). The NMR porosity is largely discrepant with the helium porosity and the MICP porosity in clay-rich Carynginia shales, but a high consistency is displayed in clay-poor Monterey shales, implying the impact of clay contents on the distinction of shale pore structure interpretations between different measurements. Further, the CBW, which is calculated by subtracting the measured effective porosity from total porosity, presents a good linear correlation with the clay content (R 2 = 0.76), implying that our correlated equation is adaptable to estimate the CBW in shale formations with the dominant clay type of illite.

Keywords: gas shale; NMR; helium porosimetry; clay bound water; porosity; pore size distribution; low-pressure gas adsorption; MICP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/11/2094/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/11/2094/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:11:p:2094-:d:236241

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().