Reservoir Modeling and Simulation of the Devonian Gas Shale of Eastern Kentucky for Enhanced Gas Recovery and CO₂ Storage Available to Purchase

Shale gas and other unconventional gas plays have become an important factor in the United States energy market and are often referred to as statistical plays due to their high heterogeneity. They present real engineering challenges for characterization and exploitation, and their productivity depends upon an inter-related set of reservoir, completion and production characteristics.

The Devonian Ohio shale of eastern Kentucky is the State's most prolific gas producer. The gas shale underlies approximately two-thirds of the state, cropping out around the Bluegrass Region of central Kentucky and having a sub crop beneath the Mississippi Embayment in western Kentucky.

This paper describes the reservoir modeling and history matching of a Devonian Gas Shale Play, eastern Kentucky, its potential for CO₂ enhanced gas recovery and storage.

A geologic model of the shale has been compiled from mineralogical, petrographic, core, production, and wireline data. The COMET3 multi-phase, dual porosity simulator is being used to investigate CO₂ injection into the shale for enhanced gas recovery. To accomplish this, a subset of wells surrounding the potential injection site has been selected for further study. These eight wells cover approximately 5,300 acres of productive shale. The reservoir was subdivided into the Upper Ohio and Lower Huron members. To capture geological heterogeneity, gas production rates for these wells served as a proxy to characterize fracture permeability using geostatistical methods. Well production was history matched applying an automated process. Finally, several CO₂ injection scenarios spanning huff-n-puff to continuous injection were reviewed to evaluate the enhanced gas recovery potential and assess the CO₂ storage capacity of these shale reservoirs.