Student Lecture Tour Overview

It is now well-documented that source rocks such as shales consist of pores with small volumes contributing to the storage of fluids. These volumes are not much larger than the fluid molecules they store. The nature of fluids under confinement in such small spaces is different such that they experience significantly amplified fluid-wall molecular interactions. Consequently, various thermodynamic states may develop for the fluids and co-exist under the subsurface conditions. Further, fluid phase may change unpredictably, and fluid flow could transition into several diffusion mechanisms.

This EAGE course for the Latin American Universities will discuss these basic differences in behavior of hydrocarbon mixtures (oil & gas) quantitatively using a multi-scale approach coupling atomistic modeling and molecular simulations to the reservoir engineering analysis, more specifically, to volumetric calculations and reserve estimation. Compared to the classical hydrocarbon fluids, the behavior (phase change/transport) could be significantly different in the source rocks. The discussion will be tied to oil/gas recovery limits from source rocks. A shale well production history-matching and optimization study will be presented using a new-generation multi-scale reservoir flow simulator including molecular effects and geo-mechanical considerations including fracture closure stress and proppant embedment calculations. A new simulation-based optimization will be demonstrated for a shale gas well’s production forecasting using rate-transient data and accounting for the effective fracture surface area contributing to the release of the fluids from the matrix.

At the end of the lecture, the instructor would like to consider the current and future global trends in oil and gas production from source rocks and discuss the major environmental considerations in drilling horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing.