An integrated geomechanical and petrophysical multiparameter approach for gas reservoir evaluation

Abstract

Integrating petrophysical and geomechanical parameters is an efficient approach to evaluating shale gas reservoir potential. The high cost of corings and their limited number, coupled with time-intensive investigation, led researchers to use this alternative combination approach. In the Jiaoshiba area, from single-pilot well core data and log measurements, petrophysical and geomechanical parameters such as shale volume, total organic carbon, gas content, as well as pore pressure, stress components, and mineral brittleness were first estimated using established methods. In the second phase, based on logging curves, the reservoir electro-facies (EF) classification was performed using the unsupervised multi-resolution graph-based clustering method on a series of twenty wells, identifying five EF with different intrinsic characteristics. Unsupervised analyses were developed using the multilayer artificial neural network while incorporating the K-nearest neighbors and graphical classification algorithms. The results from the first and second phases indicate reservoir richness in organic matter, with the best reservoir exhibited by EF2 and EF3. In addition, effective stress components (SV, SH, and Sh) evaluation shows a normal stress regime with hydraulic fracture systems perpendicular to the minimum horizontal stress at each measured depth of the reservoir (Sv > SH > Sh). This research workflow can efficiently evaluate shale reservoirs with a realistic approach for identifying favorable fracturing positions while reducing errors due to human interference.