Determining Shale Permeability to Gas by Simultaneous Analysis of Various Pressure Tests

Summary A model-assisted analysis is presented of pressure-pulse-transmission data obtained under different pressure conditions with core plugs of shale-gas formations. Applications and validations for steady-state and transient-state laboratory tests are provided. Best-estimate values of the intrinsic permeability and tortuosity at a reference condition and the Langmuir volume and pressure are determined by matching the solution of a modified Darcy model to several pressure-pulse-transmission flow tests with core samples simultaneously. The data-interpretation model considers the prevailing characteristics of the apparent permeability under the various flow regimes involving gas flow through extremely low-permeability core samples. Further, the present fully pressure-dependent shale-and gas-property formulation allows for model-assisted extrapolation from the reference conditions to field conditions once the unknown model parameters have been estimated under laboratory conditions. The improved method provides a better match to the measurements of the pressure tests than previous models, which assume only Darcy flow.