Petro-Physical and Geo-Mechanical Analysis of the Unconventional Upper Safa Formation, Western Desert, Egypt

Abstract

World energy consuming at an all-time very high, where all resources are required such as renewable energies including solar, wind, besides nuclear energy, and biofuel. Now a days, there is not any source of renewable energy can supply and fulfill our increasing world demands of the energy consumption. Unconventional reservoirs can transform the world global energy market through advances in reservoir characterization, drilling, and completion technologies. Moreover, unconventional sources can be defined by their difference of intrinsic of their geological sittings, origins, and tapping mechanisms, thus having different methodologies for exploration, production, and development methods. Therefore, it is very important to well express and identify the necessary parameters for unconventional characterization of these reservoirs for defining reservoir rock and fluid properties in terms of total organic carbon content, gas adsorption, level of maturity, grains surface roughness, original fluids in place, and etc. According to the petro-physical and geo-mechanical analysis of the case study, Upper Safa formation which is considered as a shale source rock of hydrocarbon gases can be considered as a shale gas unconventional resource play through with total organic carbon content values range between 2% to 3% and the determination of the total gas in place equals to 15.53 BCF/section after considering both of free gas and adsorbed gas in place. In addition to its applicability for sustaining multistage hydraulic fractures for making production stimulation, with a formation brittleness ratio up to 80%.