Experimental Study of the Fluid Contents and Organic/Inorganic Hydrocarbon Saturations, Porosities, and Permeabilities of Clay-Rich Shale

Fenglan Wang, Binhui Li, Sheng Cao, Jiang Zhang, Quan Xu and Qian Sang ()
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Fenglan Wang: Daqing Oilfield Co., Ltd., Daqing 163002, China
Binhui Li: National Key Laboratory for Multi-Resources Collaborative Green Production of Continental Shale Oil, Daqing 163712, China
Sheng Cao: National Key Laboratory for Multi-Resources Collaborative Green Production of Continental Shale Oil, Daqing 163712, China
Jiang Zhang: National Key Laboratory for Multi-Resources Collaborative Green Production of Continental Shale Oil, Daqing 163712, China
Quan Xu: National Key Laboratory for Multi-Resources Collaborative Green Production of Continental Shale Oil, Daqing 163712, China
Qian Sang: School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, China

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: Unlike conventional reservoirs, shale is particularly complex in its mineral composition. As typical components in shale reservoirs, clay and organic matter have different pore structures and strong interactions with fluids, resulting in complex fluid occurrence-states in shale. For example, there are both free water and adsorbed water in clay, and both free oil and ad/absorbed oil in organic matter. Key properties such as fluid content, organic/inorganic porosity, and permeability in clay-rich shale have been poorly characterized in previous studies. In this paper, we used a vacuum-imbibition experimental method combined with nuclear magnetic resonance technique and mathematical modeling to characterize the fluid content, organic/inorganic porosity, saturation, and permeability of clay-rich shale. We conducted vacuum-imbibition experiments on both shale samples and pure clay samples to distinguish the adsorbed oil and water in clay and organic matter. The effects of clay content and total organic matter content (TOC) on porosity and adsorbed-fluid content are then discussed. Our results show that, for the tested samples, organic porosity accounts for 26–76% of total porosity. The oil content in organic matter ranges from 29% to 69% of the total oil content, and 2% to 58% of the organic oil content is ad/absorbed in kerogen. The inorganic porosity has a weak positive correlation with clay content, and organic porosity increases with rising levels of organic matter content. The organic permeability is 1–3 orders of magnitude lower than the inorganic permeability.

Keywords: vacuum-imbibition; clay; shale; organic saturation; inorganic saturation; organic permeability; inorganic permeability (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: 2024
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