A novel modeling technique provides valuable insights into the maturation of oil and gas in the Tuwaiq Mountain shale formation.
Unconventional oil and gas reserves will support the transition away from fossil fuels. However, to extract these fuels as efficiently and cleanly as possible requires detailed knowledge of their maturation and timing and the mechanisms of their migration over geologic time. Now, KAUST researchers have developed a modeling framework that provides robust predictions of the pore-pressure evolution of the Tuwaiq Mountain shales in the Jafurah Basin, Saudi Arabia. Such predictions are critical for optimizing the recovery of oil and gas directly from source rocks.
“Saudi Arabia has successfully produced oil and gas using hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’), and this inspired us to examine the evolution of the Jafurah Basin,” says Syed Haider, a Ph.D. student who worked on the project under the supervision of Thomas Finkbeiner and Tadeusz Patzek. “We modeled the timing of different processes through which the basin evolved and predicted the present-day pore pressure. Such knowledge is key to the planning and optimization of hydraulic fracturing.”
How organic matter is converted into oil and gas and migrates in microfractures within rocks is determined by multiple factors, including the rate of thermal heating, source rock composition and the chemical properties of the organic material. Structural evolution, mechanical stresses and water content also play key roles. Different hydrocarbon compositions will appear at different times throughout a given formation’s evolution.
Read more at KAUST Discovery.
