Improving steady state permeability measurement in shale

Date

2015-05

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Abstract

Permeability is an intrinsic property of petroleum reservoir rock, and is one of the most important parameters affecting production of hydrocarbons. The methods of estimating permeability in conventional rocks (clean, porous and permeable) are well established and have been refined to a high degree of accuracy. With the discovery and exploitation of unconventional formations such as shale, new methods, such as transient state measurement and crushed rock techniques, have been introduced in the last decade. But these new techniques are not without their shortcomings. This work attempts to review the conventional method of steady-state measurement, and with few modifications, apply them to unconventional formations.
The problem we try to tackle is the long testing times by reducing the length of the core. We also shed light on the effect and mitigation of fracture flow. The test and analysis was run on two common unconventional formations, namely, Eagleford shale and Mancos Shale. The samples offer perspective on some scenarios with varying quality of fractures and the outcome demonstrates how the proposed modified technique improves the accuracy and the efficiency of permeability determination. The final motive of this work is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the steady state permeability measurement.


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Keywords

Permeability, Shale, Mudrocks

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