Integrated Approach to Assess Storage and Productivity Potential of a Frontier Unconventional Shale Oil Play in a Rift Basin, Lower Barmer Hill Formation, Barmer Basin, India

摘要

The Eocene Lower Barmer Hill (LBH) Formation is the major regional source rock in the Barmer Basin rift, located in Rajasthan, India, and has substantial unconventional shale potential. The basin is almost completely covered with 3D seismic, providing an opportunity for more surgical mapping of the rapid structural and stratigraphic changes typical with any syn-rift deposit. Thick sections of organic-rich black shales reaching 400 meters thickness with TOC up to 14 wt. %, were deposited during a period of widespread basin deepening. Algal-rich type I oil prone kerogens dominate in north and generate oil, with very little gas. These shales mature at much lower temperatures than the mixed type I and III kerogens in the south, which also generate much larger amounts of gas and oil, and at higher threshold temperatures. The variable kinetics, as well as rapid facies variations typical of rifts, provide challenges to high-grading and testing unconventional shale plays. Extensive Rock Eval pyrolysis and source rock kinetic databases were combined with petrophysical analysis to determine log-based porosity and saturations and productive potential. Modified Passey techniques calibrated to NMR log porosities provide estimates of organic richness as well as maturity and shale oil saturation. Basin modeling using Trinity software provides probabilistic ranges of generated and expelled hydrocarbons to determine storage capacity. The modeled oil window storage capacity varies between 6 to 13 MMBOE/km2 , comparable to the values observed in Eagle Ford and Barnett Shale plays, but in a rifted basin and not broad cratonic shelf deposits.