Ingrain Digital Rock Lab

Shale

Digital Rock Physics for Shale Plays: From Whole Core to Pore Space

The nanometer-scale features and heterogeneities that make up the transport mechanisms in oil and gas shale pose a major challenge to physical core analysis tests. Using key, patented technology, Ingrain provides special core analysis services (SCAL) that helps maximize hydrocarbon recovery and reduce risk in technically challenging reservoirs.

Ingrain has experience with the following shale plays:

Bakken
Baltic Shale in Poland
Barnett
Collingwood
Duvernay
Eagle Ford
Haynesville
Horn River
Marcellus
Middle East shale
Montney
Muskwa
North Africa shale
New Albany
Niobrara
Wolfcamp
Woodford
Utica

Unique capabilities for shale include:

Whole core X-Ray CT image (~500 images/ft)
Bulk density and effective atomic number logs
Porosity (connected, total, organic)
Organic matter content
Kg/Kw and Kg/Ko rel perm
Pc (gas/water, oil/water)

*3D vRock® Eagle Ford shale sample

Ingrain's Shale Digital Rock Physics Workflow

1. CoreHD® Whole Core Imaging & Logging

CoreHD® is Ingrain’s breakthrough technology platform for high-definition CT imaging and logging of whole core.Ingrain’s unique and proprietary methods allow computations of bulk density (RhoB) and effective atomic number (Zeff).

2. Micro2D Plug Analysis

Micro-CT analysis provides information on fine-scale laminations and fracturing at a resolution of 10-40 microns. Image analysis from 2D scanning electron microscope (SEM) data provides porosity and kerogen volume fraction at a resolution of a few nanometers and is also used as a screening process to ensure representative samples for the subsequent 3D special core analysis laboratory (SCAL) computations.

3. SCAL3D

The 3D SCAL analysis begins with nanometer-scale pore and matrix imaging. This process uses a focused ion beam SEM (FIB-SEM) system that acquires an SEM image of an ion-beam polished surface, then uses the ion beam to slice away a few nanometers of rock and takes another SEM image.

This is repeated several hundred times for each sample. All of the individual images are aligned and combined into a single 3D volume called a vRock®. Shale 3D vRocks are used for porosity and permeability analysis.