Abstract :
This paper deals with the bottleneck for understanding the production behavior of unconventional shale reservoirs, i.e. the flow regimes in the nanopores of shales during gas production. We first discuss the transport mechanisms of gas within the matrix pores and its variation with respect to Knudsen number, and thus flow regime in shale gas reservoirs is described systematically. Subsequently, an apparent gas permeability model is proposed for all flow regimes, which incorporate the organic, as well as inorganic shale matrix. This gas permeability model is validated over field data in order to authenticate its functionality, thus making it fit to be used as a generalized flow model in time to come. The later part deals with establishing the gas production model of shale reservoir using a dual porosity approach. Future scope of the paper includes the validation test runs of the derived flow model against production data, in order to understand the correct behavior of the proposed flow model over ranges of Knudsen number which are still to be proposed with a specific flow model, thus giving us better understanding of flow regimes in a shale gas matrix.
