A comparative investigation of shale wettability: The significance of pore connectivity

摘要

We conduct spontaneous imbibition experiments, using oil and water, to compare the wetting behavior of rock samples from the Montney (MT) and the Horn River (HR), two massive unconventional gas plays in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The MT samples imbibe more oil than water, while, the HR samples imbibe more water than oil. For the two cases, the difference between oil and water imbibition is even more pronounced when plotted versus dimensionless scaling time. The observed imbibition behavior cannot be fully explained by the contact-angle results showing complete spreading of oil and partial spreading of water, for the two rock cases.