(267b) Characterization of Unconventional Reservoirs: From Lab Study to Reservoir Simulations

<span" roman"="Roman"" new="New">Unconventional resources represent an extremely important portion of future energy supply, and recent advances in horizontal well and fracking technologies have spurred the largest growth in oil and gas supply in decades. However, the fundamental phenomena associated with gas and oil production from unconventional reservoirs are still poorly understood, and the complexity in both composition and pore structure of unconventional rocks leads to challenges in characterizing and quantifying storage, mass transfer and fluid-rock interactions. In addition, scaling up lab data to reservoir level is more difficult than that encountered in chemical industry. This presentation will examine the key challenges for improving gas and oil production from unconventional formations, and then highlight a few areas where Reaction Engineering concepts and skills are critical. Recent results on phase behavior, mass transfer and reaction phenomena in ultra-tight porous media will be reviewed, with an emphasis on identifying key mechanisms, analyzing lab data, building adequate model and developing relevant upscaling criteria for reservoir simulations.