Abstract
Successful exploration and development of shale gas reservoirs have enabled the United States to ensure a predominantly domestic supply of gas for many years. Pore structures can significantly impact the mechanical and physical properties of the rock such as permeability, strength and durability. Understanding the microstructures of the rocks accurately and quantitatively is essential to petroleum engineering for evaluating and development of oil and gas, especially for the unconventional reserves with abundant interior nanoscale pores such as shale. The pore structure and morphology of twelve shale samples from the Blue Nile Formation in the Blue Nile Basin were carried out by apply-ing Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). FESEM is a widely used technique to examine pore structures in shale reser-voirs. The results of FESEM show that the Blue Nile shale samples have nanoscale pores which can be classified into four types: inter-particle pores, organic pores, intra-particle pores and micro-fractures. The common types are inter-particle pores between the clay particles and organic nano-pores. These pores are all large enough to store gas molecules.
Highlights
The recent popularity of unconventional gas shales as a future long-term energy source has, among other things, led to significant advances in understanding shale depositional and diagenetic processes, macroscale to microscale sedi-mentary structures, both coarse- and fine-scale stacking patterns of different lithofacies, and sequence- and para-sequence scale stratigraphy [1, 2]
There are different methods which can be used for characterizing pore structures in shale formations, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and field emission SEM (FESEM), Fluid injection techniques including mercu-ry intrusion porosimetry (MIP) using Fluid injection tech-niques and low pressure and N2/CO2 gas adsorption [10]
Ten cutting samples from the Blue Nile For-mation were analyzed using SEM technique to study the structure of the minerals
Summary
The recent popularity of unconventional gas shales as a future long-term energy source has, among other things, led to significant advances in understanding shale depositional and diagenetic processes, macroscale to microscale sedi-mentary structures, both coarse- and fine-scale stacking patterns of different lithofacies, and sequence- and para-sequence scale stratigraphy [1, 2]. There are different methods which can be used for characterizing pore structures in shale formations, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and field emission SEM (FESEM), Fluid injection techniques including mercu-ry intrusion porosimetry (MIP) using Fluid injection tech-niques and low pressure and N2/CO2 gas adsorption [10]. In this study twelve shale samples from the Blue Nile Formation in the Blue Nile Basin are use to document and classify the variety of pore types and to speculate on their potential control on gas storage by using Field emission electron microscope (FE-SEM)
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