GEOLOGY OF TIGHT GAS

The geology of most tight gas plays, whether old fashioned like the Alberta Deep Basin, or the
new "really-tight" plays is slightly more complicated than conventional gas plays, although the
two can combine or grade into each other. One of the better descriptions is in "Tight Gas
Reservoirs – An Unconventional Natural Energy Source for the Future", by G. C.Naik, SPE 2003.

Naik describes four criteria that define

basin-centered gas accumulations like
the Alberta Deep Basin, including low
permeability, abnormal pressure, gas
saturated reservoirs and no down dip
water leg. Later he mentions the updip
water block that traps the gas, as
proposed by Masters and Gray in the late
1970's.But not all tight gas is a basin-
centered accumulation, so different
concepts apply in different areas.

The illustration at the right attempts to

show the difference between
conventional and unconventional basin
centered gas accumulations. The red
interval acts as an updip water block, with gas below it in unconventional traps, with
conventional traps above the seal. Master and Gray wrote that the water block is transitional over
a 5 to 10 mile wide band and is not related to a structural or stratigraphic boundary.

Masters and Gray explained this phenomenon by

showing where the water block and gas reservoirs
fit on the relative permeability curve for the gas -
water system, as shown on the left. Little water is
produced in the gas zones, regardless of water
saturation, due to the low relative permeability of
the water phase.

The concept of a water block merely means that

irreducible water saturation is very high. On log
analysis depth plots, this looks like "water over
gas", which cannot happen in a conventional
reservoir. The result looks like an upside-down
transition zone.

Basin margin gas traps, as in the Cretaceous of

south eastern Alberta, are relatively low porosity,
low permeability plays, but are not now considered
to be unconventional. They do not have a water
block as a seal and occur in normal stratigraphic
traps. The gas is biogenic (formed from kerogen in
situ). Gas does not migrate far from its source.

Their behaviour is sometimes a little unusual, depending again on the relative permeability
curves.
According to Naik's paper "In a traditional reservoir, there is relative permeability in excess of 2%
to one or both fluid phases across a wide range of water saturation. Further, in traditional
reservoir, critical water saturation and irreducible water saturation occur at similar values of water
saturation. Under these conditions, the absence of widespread water production commonly
implies that a reservoir system is at, or near, irreducible water saturation. In low-permeability
reservoirs, however, irreducible water saturation and critical water saturation can be dramatically
different. In traditional reservoir, there is a wide range of water saturations at which both water
and gas can flow. In low-permeability reservoirs, there is a broad range of water saturations in
which neither gas nor water can flow. In some very low-permeability reservoir, there is virtually no
mobile water phase even at very high water saturations."

Comparison of capillary pressure and relative permeability curves for conventional gas (left) and
tight gas (right) showing a large water saturation range in tight gas reservoirs over which no gas
or water will flow.

The Montney distal shelf (‘tight gas’) play has become one of the hottest natural gas resource
plays in the WCSB. Horizontal drilling and multi-stage frac technology have been the key to
unlocking the resources and placing the Montney in the top three most economic resource plays
in North America. Industry analysts estimate upward of 5,000 horizontal wells will be drilled in the
upcoming decades, with a capital outlay approaching $30 billion.

To illustrate petrophysical analysis of tight gas sands, we will use the Montney as the classic
example of the problems and solutions.Some of those problems are radioactivity from uranium
associated with kerogen, highly variable mineralogy, very fine grained texture, and several
hydrocarbon types that are difficult to segregate.

Most tight gas sands have a wide variety of rock textures and mineral compositions vertically in
the wellbore as well as laterally between wells or along the track of horizontal wells. Trying to find
"sweet spots" and steering along them is a challenging task. The illustration below shows
microphotos of four distinct facies in the Montney from west east across west central Alberta.
Porosity, grain size, saturation, and permeability vary considerably.

Photo micrographs of Montney facies. The stratigraphic cross section is also complicated so
correlation across long distances is somewhat difficult.

SHALE VOLUME CALCULATIONS IN TIGHT GAS

Many tight sands are radioactive due mainly to uranium associated with phosphates or kerogen.
This can be identified with a spectral gamma ray log and it should always be run when penetrating
radioactive sands. Sadly, it is often not requested, even though the service is cheap and costs no
extra rig time.
Spectral gamma ray log shows Uranium (U),
Potassium (K), Thorium (Th), and standard gamma ray
(GR). Red vertical line is TH0, the clean line for the
Thorium curve, and the black vertical line is GR0, the
clean line for the GR curve.

The Thorium curve is best for shale volume

calculations. The SP is flat and useless, Density
neutron separation is mostly due to dolomite and
other heavy minerals so it cannot be used. The gamma
ray can be used in the absence of the Thorium curve
by assuming Uranium content is constant.
1: VSHth = (TH - TH0) / (TH100 - TH0)
2: VSHgr = (GR - GR0) / (GR100 - GR0)

The Clavier correction to the gamma ray result is often

used to smooth out minor variations in uranium
content that make the gamma ray look "noisy":
3: VSHclavier = 1.7 - (3.38 - (VSHgr + 0.7) ^ 2) ^
0.5

Choose VSHth in preference to VSHgr or VSHclavier

when the thorium curve is available. This becomes
Vsh for all future calculations.

The clean lines TH0 and GR0 are easy to pick (red and
black lines on the illustration). Shale lines are harder
as they are often off-scale to the right or buried under
a plethora of backup curves. In the absence of a good
pick from the log, use:
4: TH100 = TH0 + 25
5: GR100 = GR0 + 150

Adjust the constants to suit your local knowledge.

Calculation of porosity is very sensitive to the shale volume in tight gas sands, so it is critical to
calibrate Vsh from logs with clay volume from bulk XRD data sets or tables of petrographic thin
section point counts. A difference of a few percent clay can mean the difference between NO PAY
and ALL PAY.

IMPORTANT: Remember that all log analysis models for TOC are calibrated to standard
geochemistry lab data that often do not discriminate between kerogen and pyrobitumen. Either or
both may be present. Both have variable but fortunately similar physical propertiees so
converting log derived TOC to "kerogen" may actually be a conversion to pyrobitumen or a
mixture of the two components. In the following material, you may want to substitute the words
"Organic Matter" for "Kerogen" to be more general.

POROSITY CALCULATIONS IN TIGHT GAS

Even though most tight gas sands are a complex mixture of quartz, dolomite, calcite, and
sometimes pyrite, with a little clay, the standard density neutron complex lithology crossplot
model works well most of the time. However a correction for kerogen needs to be made to the
data if any is present:
6: PHIdc = PHID – (Vsh * PHIDSH) – (Vker * PHIDKER)
 7: PHInc = PHIN – (Vsh * PHINSH) – (Vker * PHINKER)
8: PHIe = (PHInc + PHIdc) / 2

A more complete description of the porosity method and the conversion of TOC weight fraction to
kerogen volume fracture are given in the Gas Shale Chapter.

This step requires careful calibration. For example, if Vker > PHIek, there is something seriously
wrong in the calculation of PHIek or TOC.

Methods that avoid the neutron log are also useful, including sonic-only, density-only, or sonic
density crossplot. Each method should be shale corrected and calibrated to core. Matrix and fluid
properties are needed for this, possibly on a zone by zone basis. Some samples are shown below.

Crossplots of sonic (left) and density (right) versus core porosity. Best fit lines give DTCmatrix =
182 with
DTCfluid = 500 usec/m and DENSmatrix = 2710 with DENSfluid = 1050 kg/m3. The red line on the
 density crossplot shows a relationship with DENSfluid = 400 kg/m3. Such a relationship has
received some support in the industry but clearly does not fit the core data available on this
project.

The equations for solving the sonic and density models are as follows:
9: PHIdc = PHID – (Vsh * PHIDSH) – (Vker * PHIDKER)
10: PHIsc = PHIS – (Vsh * PHISSH) – (Vker * PHISKER)
11: PHIe = (PHInc + PHIdc) / 2

The matrix values that lead to PHID and PHIS may need some juggling to calibrate to core
porosity. Values in the quartz + heavy mineral range usually work. An example is shown later on
this page.

More sophisticated multi-mineral and statistical methods are definitely desirable, but these are not
always available quickly.

If these methods agree with each other, then the regression worked well. If they are in general
agreement with the density neutron crossplot, then it should be used because it has slightly
better compensation for mineral variations. However, if it is considerably higher than sonic and
density results (or core data), then abnormal neutron absorber minerals should be suspected and
the density neutron method should be discarded.

To reduce rough hole and sonic skips, taking an average of 3 or 4 methods may be used.

Nuclear magnetic resonance logs have become popular in tight gas, but they require special
attention. They generally show near zero effective porosity (BVI + BVM) but the NMR total porosity
(CBW + BVI + BVM) is close to the effective porosity from the methods discussed above. This
suggests that the NMR cannot tell the difference between clay bound water, capillary bound water,
or gas in these low porosities.

WATER SATURATION CALCULATIONS IN TIGHT GAS

There may be enough clay that the Archie model should not be be used. It costs nothing extra to
use a shale corrected saturation equation such as Simandoux or Dual Water model:
12: C = (1 - Vsh) * A * (RW@FT) / (PHIe ^ M)
13: D = C * Vsh / (2 * RSH)
14: E = C / RESD
15: Sw = ((D ^ 2 + E) ^ 0.5 - D) ^ (2 / N)

In many cases, the electrical properties must be varied from world average values to get Sw to
match lab data. Typically A = 1.0 with M = N = 1.5 to 1.8.
The result is very sensitive to clay volume (Vsh) and shale resistivity (RSH) in low porosity rocks.

Electrical properties variations between facies and with depth or diagenesis are not published.
This lab work is worth the effort, as considerable increases in gas in place are possible with small
reductions in M and N values.

Water recoveries are usually negligible and fairly fresh as the water is condensed from entrained
water vapour. The minimum water saturation on capillary pressure curves might be used to work
backwards to find an RW that will give a reasonable water saturation. Core analysis water
saturation, at least in more modern wells, seems to be a good guide and RW can be adjusted
accordingly.
 PERMEABILITY CALCULATIONS IN TIGHT GAS
Permeability may show a reasonable relationship to core
porosity. In the example at right, there is a strong
correlation. Many older core analyses do not record
permeability below 0.01 mD so are quite useless. Modern
tight rock methods can give permeability in nanoDarcies.
The equation of the line in this example is Perm = 10^(20.0 *
PHIe - 2.75). A few high perm data points are fractured
samples.

LITHOLOGY CALCULATIONS IN TIGHT

GAS
How do we know which minerals to use in the petrophysical
log analysis? Detailed sample descriptions are a good start.
Both X-Ray diffraction data and thin section point counts
can be used. Both methods are considered semi-
quantitative and come from tiny samples compared to the volume measured by logs. So we don't
get too excited about obtaining a close numerical match .

Standard 3-mineral models using PE, density, and neutron data are used with appropriate
parameters for the selected minerals, provided the neutron log is not shifted to the left due to iron
or other neutron absorbers. If this happens, we can calculate a matrix density from the sonic
density crossplot porosity and run a 2-mineral model:
22: DENSma = (DENS - PHIe * DENSfluid - (1 - Vsh) * DENSSH) / (1 - PHIe - Vsh).

If Vsh > 0.85, we set DENSma = DENS. If matrix density is too high compared to known lithology, it
means porosity is too high. Adding shale or eliminating bad data will reduce this problem - the
calculation is a good quality-control step.

Multi-mineral solvers can be used if spectral gamma ray data is available. In this case, shale
volume would be derived also. Elemental capture spectroscopy logs are also used. These solve
for the minerals and kerogen from the chemical element composition of the rock discovered by
the logging tool, but it may not do justice to the porosity, which should be checked by
conventional methods.

As in all things petrophysical, there is not much accuracy in the calculation of small volumes of
minerals or porosity.

PYRITE CORRECTIONS
Dispersed pyrite is described in most XRD reports on at least the Doig and Montney, but not in the
Cretaceous Deep Basin reservoirs. However, unlike the Bakken tight oil case, it seems to be
unconnected to the porosity and has no impact on the high resistivity values seen in these zones.
So far, no corrections have been needed in the tight case plays.

TIGHT GAS EXAMPLE

This example shows a tight gas sand in the Montney play that behaves like a normal sandstone as
far as log analysis is concerned. The porosity is halfway between the density and neutron
porosity curves. The gamma ray is quite high due to uranium, but the XRD bulk clay is low (0.00 to
0.10 fractional, 0 to 10% by weight). These values don’t change much when converted to volume
fraction. Resistivity is reasonably high and RW is moderately low, so water saturation is low. Only
the raw log curves are shown here to illustrate the fact that visual analysis is quite straight
forward provided you get over the “hang-up” of the high gamma ray values.
Example showing raw logs for a typical Montney tight gas sand. Zone is clean and core porosity
is halfway between the density and neutron porosity. Zone is radioactive, quartz + dolomite.
This next example shows the effect of abnormal neutron absorbers on the porosity results, and
the use of sonic and density data to avoid giving too high a porosity. Some wells show larger
neutron offsets; some show no abnormal effects. Calibrating each curve to core and then taking
an average tends to remove variations in lithology that would otherwise distort the porosity
result.

This illustration of a portion of a lower Montney shows the use of multiple pay flags (porosity of
3% = red, 4% = green) beside GR track that emphasize the laminated nature of the porosity. The
"multi-porosity" track to the right of the resistive has (from left to right) PHIN_SS, PE, PHIxndc
(grey), PHIS (blue), Final Porosity (solid black), PHIDcustom (green), and PHID_SS.The final
porosity is a weighted average of the other curves, after shale corrections, because there appear
to be abnormal neutron absorbers that have shifted the neutron to the left, causing the density
neutron complex lithology model to read a bit too high. The matrix density track shows
reasonable values that agree with XRD and core grain densities in other wells. The porosity track
shows the final porosity (shaded red) with crossplot porosity just a little bit to the left.
Permeability is from regression of core data. Lithology on the far right is a 2-mineral model using
the matrix density derived from porosity and density data, using quartz+feldspar and
dolomite+heavy as two "generic" minerals. Grid lines are 1 meter spacing.