Faced with increasing field maturity and production decline from conventional gas reservoirs, oil companies are shifting their focus and pursuing new alternatives; one of them being the development of shale and gas plays. To be economically viable, these low-permeability formations require fracture stimulation. Interval selection within shale reservoirs for hydraulic fracturing or horizontal laterals are based on several variables: sufficient organic matter or total organic carbon (TOC) and favorable hydraulic fracturing stimulation. The presence and extent of the natural fracture system can also influence the performance of a shale reservoir; therefore, natural fractures should be characterized within the shale formation not only from wireline or LWD borehole images logs but also from cross-dipole deep shear wave imaging which can illuminate fractures up to 60 ft away that do not intersect the well. To assess these aspects, a mineralogical, structural, and geomechanical characterization of the shale formation should be conducted. The mineralogical characterization and TOC quantifications mainly rely on a pulsed neutron spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) logs. The processing of capture and inelastic gamma ray spectra obtained from the pulsed neutron tool quantifies the formation's basic elemental composition, including silicon, calcium, aluminum, iron, sulfur, magnesium, and carbon. Geomechanical characterization is based on acoustic and density log responses. Variation in the reservoir mineralogy and TOC content affect the rock mechanics properties. Stress vs. strain curves can be derived from a micro-mechanical model of the rock which enable correlations between dynamic (obtained from acoustic logs) and static elastic properties (obtained from triaxial compression testing on core samples). Additionally, the azimuthal and transverse shear wave anisotropies are processed from cross-dipole acoustic logs to characterize the vertical and horizontal rock stiffness. This anisotropic characterization of the rock enables the evaluation of the fracture gradient and stress contrast between the target formation and the overlying and underlying formations. The paper focuses on the interaction between mineralogy, organic content and geomechanical analyses in shale gas reservoir evaluation.

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