PROCEEDINGS

Joint Convention Balikpapan 2015

HAGI-IAGI-IAFMI-IATMI
5-8 October 2015
Organic Shale Characterization and Maturity Analysis Using Anisotropic SCA-DEM Modeling
Raphael Ardyanto Sunardi1 and Ignatius Sonny Winardhi1. 1Institut Teknologi Bandung.

Abstract
This research highlights the modeling of anisotropic
organic shale using limited data of XRD data and well log
data consisting of Sonic and Gamma Ray. Combination of
anisotropic Self-Consistent Approximation (SCA) and
Differential Effective Medium (DEM) is implemented to
create a bi-connected organic shale model, which is
developed in the following flows: (1) A clay-fluid
composite is built using SCA method as background
medium, (2) Inclusion composite of quartz-kerogen is
added into the background medium incrementally using
DEM, and (3) P-wave velocity is calculated from the
elastic stiffness of organic shale composite to be fitted
with Sonic VP log. The maturity of kerogen is modeled
which evaluates the effects of kerogen transformation into
gas using Brown-Korringas anisotropic fluid substitution.
The obtained organic shale model is then used to establish
the bridge between rock properties and log responses: (1)
Volume of kerogen is estimated with correlation of
50.42% to XRD data, confirmed with quartz volume
correlation of 49.17% and shear modulus correlation of
74.50%, (2) Kerogen inclusion increases P-wave
anisotropy and anellipticity parameter , (3) Kerogen
transformation to gas increases the anisotropy of shale
model, and (4) Maturity of kerogen decreases both
Youngs modulus and Poissons ratio as kerogen
replacement decreases both bulk modulus K and VP.
Introduction
By the discovery of shale oil and shale gas in the late
1990s, the definition of shale was extended from source
rocks and seal into reservoir rock. Previously, it was
understood that high pressure and temperature from burial
caused the organic material in shale to decompose,
generating oil and gas which migrated into a more porous
rock types such as sandstone and limestone to form
conventional oil and gas reservoir. However, shale was
later observed to be a more complex porous material,
composed of percolating and interpenetrating fluid and
solid phases. This newly observed characteristic of shale,
together with the fine-grained composition of shale causes
not all the transformed kerogen to be migrated into
conventional reservoirs, instead some of the oil and gas
are trapped within the shale. This retained hydrocarbon is
what we now refer to as shale oil and gas.
Because of its clay-rich components (Figure 1), shale is
characterized with strong velocity anisotropy as a result of
the shape and preferred orientation of clay platelets.
Kerogen content also plays important role in shale
anisotropy due to mechanical compaction during
diagenesis of shale. The strong velocity anisotropy in
shale increases the importance of anisotropy to be
included in the analysis involving organic-rich shales,
such as normal-moveout correction, dip-moveout

correction, seismic migration, AVO analysis, as well as

rock physics modeling. Without velocity anisotropy
analysis, the analysis involving shales will result in
inaccurate result because the analysis does not involve
accurate understanding in the rock microstructure of the
shales (Bandyopadhyay, 2009).

Figure 1: Classification of fine-grained sediments

(Prasad, 2012)
The main purpose of this research is to build a rock
physics which serves as a bridge between rock properties
and limited log responses. As velocity anisotropy plays
very important part in organic shale analysis, hence rock
physics model used for organic shale modeling in this
research includes anisotropy velocity, comprising of
anisotropic differential effective medium (DEM) and
anisotropic self-consistent approximation (SCA). Rock
properties to be evaluated are as follows. First, organic
content of a target area, which is estimated using the
combination of SCA-DEM modeling of organic shale.
Second, effect of the increase of kerogen volume to shale
anisotropy, which is evaluated from kerogen inclusion to
clay-fluid medium. Third, relationship between kerogen
maturity and shale brittleness as well as shale anisotropy,
which is evaluated by substituting kerogen volume with
gas.
Data and Methods
The data is retrieved from Well-X in South Sumatera
Basin, in which its stratigraphy is basically composed of a
large sedimentation cycle starting with transgression in the
beginning of cycle and ended with regression. The
availability data in Well-X is elaborated in table 1
As only limited data of volume fractions are available
from XRD and PDS, interpolation is implemented to
obtain the complete data according to depth, by which the
flow is shown in figure 2; VCLAY and VQUARTZ in figure 2
are calculated using the following equations:
=

(1)

PROCEEDINGS
Joint Convention Balikpapan 2015
HAGI-IAGI-IAFMI-IATMI
5-8 October 2015
= 1
The result of interpolation is of the form of synthetic log
shown in figure 3.
Table 1: Data availability from log and laboratory
Data Requirement

Availability

Sonic P-wave log

Sonic S-wave log

Gamma Ray log

Porosity log
Density log
X-ray diffraction data
(XRD)
Petrographic data set
(PDS)

Limited to certain
depth
Limited to certain
depth

After determining aspect ratio of each constituent of the

organic shale model, SCA-DEM method is then
implemented to build the organic shale model. SCA
method is implemented in the beginning to create the
background medium of shale, which is clay-fluid
composite. The reason of using SCA in clay-fluid
composite is because there is no host and inclusion at the
beginning of shale diagenesis, only combination of clay
and brine that forms clay-bound water in shale. The DEM
method is then implemented in adding the quartz and
kerogen mineral into clay-fluid composite because DEM
maintains the connection of phase that has been connected
before DEM is invoked. The flow on SCA-DEM modeling
of organic shale is described in figure 5.

Volume fractions of mineral constituents are then used to

calculate mineral bulk modulus, Kmin, using Voigt-ReussHill average. Aspect ratio is then estimated using the
crossplot between Kdry/Kmin and porosity, by which the
crossplot is based on the following equation:

1
=

1+

(2)

where k = / is equivalent to aspect ratio.

Aspect ratio represents the shape of rock pores, rock
matrix, as well as the mineral constituents of shale model.
Figure 4 shows the flowchart of determining aspect ratio
using the crossplot between Kdry/Kmin and density
porosity, in which soft pore aspect ratio represents soft
material (e.g. kerogen), stiff pore aspect ratio represents
stiff material (e.g. quartz, plagioclase, and pyrite), and
dominant aspect ratio represents background mineral of
the model (i.e. clay-fluid composite).

Figure 3: Interpolated volume of quartz and volume

of clay to be used as rock matrix in organic
shale modeling
Kerogen maturity analysis is then carried using kerogen
substitution with gas to simulate the maturity of kerogen
(figure 6). The effect of kerogen maturity to rock
properties such as VP, rock anisotropy, and rock brittleness
are evaluated in terms of maturity factor which describes
the volume of kerogen that has been converted into gas
(equation 3). Brown-Korringas fluid and solid
substitution method is used in substituting kerogen with
gas as it allows solid substitution in anisotropic medium.
_ = (1 )

(3)

Maturity factors used in the analysis consists of 0.4, 0.7,

and 0.99.
Results and Analysis
Aspect Ratio Analysis
The crossplot of Kdry/Kmin and porosity is shown in figure
7. Dominant aspect ratio is observed to be 0.0366 which
is obtained from the average values of factor k, while
average stiff pore aspect ratio is observed to be 0.0713 and
average soft pore aspect ratio is 0.313.
Figure 2: Interpolation method to calculate volume
fractions of each sample constituents

Organic Shale Modeling

PROCEEDINGS
Joint Convention Balikpapan 2015
HAGI-IAGI-IAFMI-IATMI
5-8 October 2015
The result of kerogen volume estimation based on V P
fitting is shown in figure 8. Kerogen volume is estimated
from the inclusion of quartz-kerogen composite into clayfluid composite which increases the elastic stiffness of
shale model to match the elastic stiffness from log data.
The result shows a correlation of 99.98% between V P
calculated and VP from Sonic and a correlation of 50.42%
between estimated kerogen volume and kerogen volume
from XRD.

Figure 6: Kerogen maturity analysis using BrownKorringa's fluid substitution for anisotropic
medium
Kerogen Maturity Analysis

Figure 4: Aspect ratio analysis using Kdry/Kmin over

density porosity crossplot

The effect of kerogen maturity is evaluated in terms of VP,

anisotropy parameters (, , and ), and shale brittleness.
First, VP is clearly affected by the replacement of kerogen
into gas by which VP decreases when maturity factor
increases (figure 11).

To confirm the result of kerogen volume estimation, shear

modulus from organic shale model is compared with shear
modulus obtained from Sonic VS log (figure 9), yielding a
correlation of 74.5%.

Figure 7: Crossplot of Kdry/Kmin and porosity to

determine aspect ratio

Figure 5: Organic shale modeling and TOC

estimation utilizing combination of SCA
and DEM

Anisotropy of Organic Shale

The effects of kerogen inclusion into clay-fluid
background to anisotropy parameters are shown in figure
10. It is observed that kerogen inclusion determines the
anisotropy of shale as anisotropy parameters increase
proportionally with the increase of kerogen volume.

Second, kerogen maturity affects the anisotropy of shale,

especially P-wave anisotropy, parameter (figure 12), and
anellipticity parameter (figure 13). Kerogen maturity is
observed to dominantly increase P-wave anisotropy as
there is a significant jump in parameter .
On the other hand, anellipticity parameter decreases as
maturity factor increases. This indicates that organic shale
becomes to be more elliptical anisotropy as gas replaces
kerogen volume within shale.
Third, kerogen replacement with gas affects the brittleness
of shale model, which is measured in terms of Youngs
modulus and Poissons ratio.

PROCEEDINGS
Joint Convention Balikpapan 2015
HAGI-IAGI-IAFMI-IATMI
5-8 October 2015
Third, kerogen maturity is simulated by replacing kerogen
volume with gas, in which it reduces VP and brittleness of
shale, while increasing the P-wave anisotropy of shale.

Figure 8: Result of VP fitted (left) and estimated

kerogen volume (right)
As shown in figure 15, Youngs modulus consists of bulk
modulus which is sensitive to pore fluid, kerogen
replacement with gas reduces the stiffness of shale model.
Similar effect is also observed on crossplot between
Youngs modulus E and Poissons ratio (figure 16) by
which kerogen maturity reduces both parameters as it
decreases bulk modulus and VP respectively.

Figure 10: Crossplots

between
Thomsen's
anisotropy parameters (1986) and
estimated kerogen volume

Figure 11: Effect of kerogen maturity on calculated

VP (blue lines) compared to Sonic VP (red
lines)
Figure 9:

Comparison between shear modulus

calculated from elastic stiffness of shale
model and from Sonic S-wave (left) and
its crossplot (right)

Conclusions
In this research, organic shale is modeled using
combination of anisotropic SCA-DEM model, by which
several rock properties are evaluated. First, kerogen
volume is estimated using VP fitting, yielding VP
correlation of 99.98% and kerogen estimation correlation
of 50.42%. Second, kerogen inclusion to clay-fluid
background increases P-wave anisotropy dominantly.

References
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Hornby, B.E. et al., 1994, Geophysics, 39, 1570 1583.
Hu, Q., X. Chen, and Y. Guo, 2013, SEG Houston 2013
Annual Meeting.

PROCEEDINGS
Joint Convention Balikpapan 2015
HAGI-IAGI-IAFMI-IATMI
5-8 October 2015
Jakobsen, M. et al., 2000, Journal of Geophysical
Research, 105, 561 577.
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Figure 14: Effect of kerogen maturity on Young's

modulus (green dots) compared to initial
condition (blue dots)

Figure 12: Effect of kerogen maturity on (green

dots) compared to its initial condition
(blue dots)

Figure 15: Effects of kerogen maturity on crossplots

between E and (green dots) compared
to initial condition (blue dots)

Figure 13: Effect of kerogen maturity on anellipticity

parameter (green dots) compared to initial
condition (blue dots)