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Australian Energy Producers Journal Australian Energy Producers Journal Society
Journal of Australian Energy Producers
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Non peer reviewed)

Complexity in tight gas sand development—an example from Perth Basin, Western Australia*

R. Rezaee
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Curtin University of Technology.

The APPEA Journal 51(2) 743-743 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ10123
Published: 2011

Abstract

One of the key issues for tight gas reservoirs is about reservoir heterogeneities and its connectivity. Knowledge of reservoir geometry, orientation and connectedness is vital for reservoir modelling, which is the essential tool for successful field development, well completion and well stimulation strategies. Fluvial sediments are heterogeneous both vertically and laterally due to facies change and diagenetic processes. These make their field development difficult.

In terms of sand geometry and connectivity, the first step to making the reservoir model in three directions is to determine the width of sandstone bodies in various directions. Fine-grained facies associated with fluvial deposits can compartmentalise reservoirs and can significantly complicate the development of such units, as well as make well stimulation and fracturing jobs unpredictable.

In this paper, the above issues are studied for some fluvial tight gas sands of the Perth Basin. The aim is to discuss the  best possible way to successfully plan well and well stimulation strategies.

Reza Rezaee is an associate professor at Curtin’s Department of Petroleum Engineering and has a PhD in reservoir characterisation.

He has more than 20 years’ experience in academia and industry. During his career he has been engaged in several research projects supported by national and international oil companies. These commissions, together with his supervisory work at various universities, have involved a wide range of achievements.

He has supervised more than 50 MSc and PhD students during his university career to date. His research has been focused on integrated solutions for reservoir characterisation, formation evaluation and petrophysics. He has used expert systems such as artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic, and has introduced several new approaches to estimate rock properties from log data where conventional methods failed to succeed.

He is presently focused on unconventional gas including gas shale and tight gas sand studies, and is the lead scientist for the WA:ERA (EIS) Tight Gas and shale gas research projects.