Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas are estimated tobe recoverable from low permeability formations in the U.S.However, the commercial exploitation of such tight gas resourceshas been hampered by uncertainty in geologic and reservoirproperties and lack of proper reservoir stimulation results. Thesuccessful development of the device planned directly addressesthis resource development constraint. The objective of thisproject is to develop a continous coring/drill stem testing (DST)device that can be used with available slim-hole, high speeddrilling technology. The coring/DST device is conceived to be asingle downhole tool that would better identify and characterizemultiple, low permeability reservoirs cost effectively using asmall diameter wellbore. These improvements would be achievedthrough (1) availability of an abundance of core from potentialreservoirs and surrounding lithologies for analysis, geophysicallog calibration, and description and (2) analyzing DST data toestimate reservoir permeability, pressure, and skin factor. Thetool may also be designed to perform small interval, in situ stressmeasurements for fracture design purposes. This approach wouldsubstantially improve formation evaluation capabilities by reducingcosts, facilitating more frequent reservoir testing, makingavailable an extensive amount of geologic and reservoirinformation, and conducting exploration evaluation in a moreenvironmentally benign manner. This would ultimately result in theaddition of significant new gas reserves from low permeabilityreservoirs. Phase I includes an engineering design study toexamine the design, fabrication, and use of this device, and a costanalysis. The device will be built and evaluated in Phase II.Anticipated Results/Potential Commercial Applications as described by the awardee:The anticipated results of this project includeimprovement of formation evaluation techniques for low permeabilityreservoirs through expanded analysis capabilities and reducedcosts. Potentially profitable reservoirs, which may not have beenproperly evaluated, may be overlooked or bypassed due to a lack ofreservoir information, lack of formation testing, poor geophysicallog quality, and a limited exploration budget. The plannedslimhole continuous coring/DST device will greatly expand availablegeologic and reservoir information to allow operators to makeprudent resource exploitation decisions, both in frontier areas andproven fields.
