Introduction to June Focus: New Insights into Canadian Unconventional Resources

The ingenuity of today’s geoscientists equals that of our pioneers, who explored Canada on horse, drilled the first wildcat (exploration) wells, and built the major industry that we now call the Canadian Oil Patch.

In this issue, geoscientists Germán Rodriguez-Pradilla, Brian Wm. Schulte, Raphael A.J. Wutz, and Xiaojun Cui discuss new insights into the Montney and Duvernay Formations.

In our first paper, "Changes in the Oil & Gas Industry – Unconventional Plays (Engineering Fused with Geoscience)", Brian Schulte gives a broad overview of deep basin stacked, tight, clastic reservoirs and unconventional plays, with emphasis on the Montney and Duvernay in Alberta’s Deep Basin. He discusses geological factors that affect development (e.g. fluid phase, mineralogy, pressure regime and rock fabric), and describes techniques such as pre-stack depth migration, AVO analysis, and microseismic mapping, to lower overall costs, reduce risk, and maximize production. He emphasizes that abnormally high formation pressures often improve natural porosity, permeability and the effectiveness of artificial fracture networks.

In our second paper,"Reservoir Characterization of a Duvernay-Fox Creek Shale Reservoir using Seismic, Microseismic, and Well Log Data" , Germán Rodriguez-Pradilla presents a reservoir characterization study on the Duvernay Formation in Central Alberta. He discusses how microseismic monitoring is used to help understand induced seismicity and subtle faulting. Microseismic is also used to track fracture propagation and, in so doing, estimate the volume of the effectively stimulated reservoir. He integrates microseismic data with conventional 3D seismic and well logs, and uses production modelling equations to help forecast hydrocarbon production.

In our final paper,"From X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) to Mechanical Profiling for Better Well Completion. Valuable Analytics for the Exploration Toolbox!", Raphael Wutz and Xiaojun Cui carry out X-ray fluorescence (XRF) geochemical and Leeb Hardness profiling for a regional core assemblage in the Montney Formation of Alberta, and subsequently derive physical properties, such as total organic carbon (TOC), Young’s Modulus, Poisson’s Ratio and brittleness. They explain that these can be used to select the best stratigraphic sections for completion targets. The authors discuss that well cuttings analysis can offer a relatively low cost means of understanding varying rock and mechanical properties, once robust calibrations are established for a particular formation.

Enjoy!