Regional Evaluations of Gas Shales, Indonesia

This project will consist of the characterization and evaluation of numerous conventional cores, rotary sidewall cores, and drill cutting samples taken from multiple wells targeting potentially productive shale formations from the Indonesian archipelago. Specifically, these prospective shale sections will be analyzed for geological, petrophysical, geochemical, and where applicable geomechanical properties. These data will be integrated with well logs, and production test information as available. This large and searchable database will provide operators with valuable information not only on their own wells but also on other operator’s wells. The project will be focused on utilizing the experience of evaluating numerous North American gas shale wells in expanding the evaluation of gas shale reservoirs in Indonesia.

Core Laboratories will also contribute to the dataset by provision of well cuttings, shallow borehole and outcrop samples from national institutions. We anticipate this contribution to be of the order of 20 wells. Further wells will be either contributed by operators or sourced from national institutions with the approval of the operator. We anticipate a database of some 40 wells in Year one of the study.

Primary objective

The primary objective of this project is to provide operators with measured geological, petrophysical, geomechanical, geochemical properties of the gas shale formations throughout Indonesia, in order to improve their formation evaluation and to optimize stimulation and production. Our work in North America and Europe suggests that understanding the similarities and differences in shales is the key to successful exploration and exploitation. The resultant database will be an invaluable tool to operators in evaluating, comparing, and designing completion and stimulation methods for shale formations.

Specific project objectives include:

• Geologically characterize the cored gas shales in terms of depositional facies, environment of deposition, and rock types
• Characterize and classify gas shales in terms of their lithology, mineralogy, clay content, clay types, and pore structure including macro and micro-fractures
• Measure and characterize the various petrophysical properties
• Measure and characterize the organic content of gas shales in terms of total organic content (TOC), Rock Eval, pyrolysis, and vitrinite reflectance
• Determine the gas desorption associated with kerogen and adsorption isotherm for gas storage capacity as a function of reservoir pressure
• Measure and profile the key geomechanical properties
• Core-log calibration of open-hole logs for the development of petrophysical models to determine gas shale properties
• Integrate the core data with well logs, fracture stimulation techniques, and production test results to aid companies in their evaluation and exploitation of gas shale reservoirs
• Utilize and integrate the core and production data to perform production forecasts
• Develop relationships from the database to aid in evaluating and comparing various Gas Shale rock properties
• Develop a “Gas Shale Rock Catalog” in order to aid in the evaluation of Gas Shale properties from drill cuttings and logs
• Provide operators with a searchable database for various gas shales and their associated properties that can be used as analogs to aid in the appraisal and exploitation of “unknown or newly discovered” gas shales

* In progress and available for participation