Optical pressure measurement in micro-fractures

Project Summary/Abstract: For reservoir development and management in the highly flow- restrictive shales of today’s unconventional reservoirs, the oil and gas industry needs to quantify oil flow characteristics. With production, reservoirs characteristics change while the data from flow tests of cores captured during drilling give very imprecise and inaccurate data only about initial reservoir conditions. We are proposing a new, novel, and non-intrusive approach to simulating conditions in a developing reservoir while enabling quantitative measurement of the flow in micro-fractures. Our approach is a small, easy to fabricate laboratory test system that uses well-established optical refraction technology to “see” inside hydrocarbon-filled, pressurized micro-cracks, and measure the internal pressure and associated phase characteristics simulating flow in shales. At present, we have built two demonstration modules showing the feasibility of making these measurements in a pressurized, crack-simulation setup. The oil and gas industry has seen these simulations and expressed much enthusiasm and encouragement. To go forward in the next phase, we are proposing to upgrade our bench test demonstration version to a full laboratory-scale test bed, build rock-simulating samples, and calibrate these samples and the system through developing requisite analysis software and theory.