Classification of microscopic pore-throats and the grading evaluation on shale oil reservoirs

Abstract

On the basis of the characterization of microscopic pore-throats in shale oil reservoirs by high-pressure mercury intrusion technique, a grading evaluation standard of shale oil reservoirs and a lower limit for reservoir formation were established. Simultaneously, a new method for the classification of shale oil flow units based on logging data was established. A new classification scheme for shale oil reservoirs was proposed according to the inflection points and fractal features of mercury injection curves: microscopic pore-throats (less than 25 nm), small pore-throats (25−100 nm), medium pore-throats (100−1 000 nm) and big pore-throats (greater than 1 000 nm). Correspondingly, the shale reservoirs are divided into four classes, I, II, III and IV according to the number of microscopic pores they contain, and the average pore-throat radii corresponding to the dividing points are 150 nm, 70 nm and 10 nm respectively. By using the correlation between permeability and pore-throat radius, the permeability thresholds for the reservoir classification are determined at 1.00× 10−3 μm2, 0.40×10−3 μm2 and 0.05×10−3 μm2 respectively. By using the exponential relationship between porosity and permeability of the same hydrodynamic flow unit, a new method was set up to evaluate the reservoir flow belt index and to identify shale oil flow units with logging data. The application in the Dongying sag shows that the standard proposed is suitable for grading evaluation of shale oil reservoirs.