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Comparative study on the Lower Silurian Longmaxi marine shale in the Jiaoshiba shale gas field and the Pengshui area in the southeast Sichuan Basin, China

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Abstract

The Jiaoshiba shale gas field and Pengshui area are both located in the southeast Sichuan Basin with only 100 km apart. Although these two areas obtained shale gas flow from the Lower Silurian Longmaxi marine shale, there is a huge difference of production in these two areas where the Jiaoshiba shale gas field is more productive than the Pengshui area. In order to figure out the reason that caused this difference, this study analyzed the Longmaxi marine shale in these two areas by using drilling cores, and mineralogical and geochemical data. The results show that the Jiaoshiba shale gas field has a higher quality shale reservoir (higher content of quartz, higher porosity, higher permeability and higher TOC (Total Organic Carbon)) in the Lower Silurian Longmaxi Formation than that of the Pengshui area. The Lower Silurian Longmaxi marine shale in the Jiaoshiba shale gas field contains a higher total gas content (3.65 m3/ton in average) than that of the Pengshui area (1.19 m3/ton in average). Through structure analysis, this study found that the Jiaoshiba shale gas field and the Pengshui area located in the different tectonic units. The Jiaoshiba shale gas filed is located in the East Sichuan fold belt (wide spaced anticlines area) at the west side of the Qiyue mountain fault where less fractures are developed and the pressure coefficient is more than 1.5, resulting in much more free gas preserved in the shale reservoirs in the Lower Silurian Longmaxi Formation (the ratio of free gas content and absorbed gas content is 1.6), while the Pengshui area is located in the Hunan-Hubei-Guizhou thrust belt area at the east side of the Qiyue mountain fault where much more fractures are developed and the pressure coefficient is less than 1.0, leading to less free gas preserved in the Longmaxi marine shale (the ratio of free gas content and absorbed gas content is 0.6), that is why the shale reservoir in the Pengshui area has a lower total gas content than that in the Jiaoshiba shale gas field.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 41602147, 41728004). We wish to thank SINOPEC for providing the samples and some test data for this study. We also want to thank Dr. Bryony Richards-McClung, Energy and Geoscience Institute at University of Utah at Salt Lake City in the US, for providing QEMSCAN image analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geoscience and Technology, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, China

    Lei Chen & Chan Luo

  2. Key Laboratory of Tectonics and Petroleum Resources of Ministry of Education, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan, 430074, China

    Lei Chen & Yongchao Lu

  3. East China Branch of Sinopec, Nanjing, 210011, China

    Jianqing Li

  4. Sinopec Exploration Company, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Xusheng Guo

  5. Energy & Geosciences Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 84108, USA

    Shu Jiang

  6. Research Institute of Unconventional Oil and Gas and Renewable Energy, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, China

    Shu Jiang

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  1. Lei Chen
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Chen, L., Lu, Y., Li, J. et al. Comparative study on the Lower Silurian Longmaxi marine shale in the Jiaoshiba shale gas field and the Pengshui area in the southeast Sichuan Basin, China. Geosci J 24, 61–71 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12303-019-0014-y

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