• The Korean Journal of Petroleum Geology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.36-44
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• 2008

Natural gas in tight reservoirs, one of unconventional hydrocarbon resources, has become a significant exploration and exploitation targets. Tight gas reservoirs are the gas-bearing rocks that commonly have a permeability of less than 0.1 millidarcy (mD). Tight gas reservoirs are characterized by extensive and deep locations as well as abnormal pressure such as over- or under-pressure. The tight gas reservoirs are independent of structural or stratigraphic traps, whereas conventional gases normally occur at these traps. Tight gas reservoirs can be productive when stimulated by hydraulic fracturing. Better production areas within the tight reservoir beds are referred to as sweet spots that are commonly caused by natural fractures, which should be understood and identified to enhance the recovery of the gas from tight reservoirs. The exploration and production techniques allow the commercial production of tight gas, one of environmentally friendly resources. Slant and horizontal wells have best production when they intersect the fractures. Gas production from the tight reservoirs has rapidly grown in U.S. and Canada. Indeed, the U.S. gas production of tight sandstones increases from 11.1% in 1990 to 24.1% in 2005. The presence of tight gas reservoirs has been suggested on the Korean offshore block 6-1. Paradigm shift from conventional to unconventional tight reservoir is required to develop the tight gas from the block.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.20-30
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• 2014

To develop a unconventional gas reservoir, an analysis of tight rock property are required. Especially, conventional measurements are difficult to be applied to unconventional resources such as tight gas reservoir because the permeability are extremely low compared to a conventional gas reservoir. In this study, an apparatus was developed for measuring low permeability and porosity based on a pressure pulse decay method under unsteady state conditions. The apparatus was applied for measuring the porosity and permeability of tight sand core samples from Gyeongsang basin in Korea. As a validation of the measurement, regression analysis was carried out using the dimensionless pseudo-pressure between the measured data and analytical solution. The results show the correlation coefficients above 0.96. Therefore, it is believed that the apparatus has a high accuracy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.69 no.3
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• pp.317-326
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• 2019

This research aims to assess the tight seismic risk curve of the intake tower at Geumgwang reservoir by considering the recorded historical earthquake data in the Korean Peninsula. The seismic fragility, a significant part of risk assessment, is updated by using Bayesian inference to consider the uncertainties and computational efficiency. The reservoir is one of the largest reservoirs in Korea for the supply of agricultural water. The intake tower controls the release of water from the reservoir. The seismic risk assessment of the intake tower plays an important role in the risk management of the reservoir. Site-specific seismic hazard is computed based on the four different seismic source maps of Korea. Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) method is used to estimate the annual exceedance rate of hazard for corresponding Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA). Hazard deaggregation is shown at two customary hazard levels. Multiple dynamic analyses and a nonlinear static pushover analysis are performed for deriving fragility parameters. Thereafter, Bayesian inference with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is used to update the fragility parameters by integrating the results of the analyses. This study proves to reduce the uncertainties associated with fragility and risk curve, and to increase significant statistical and computational efficiency. The range of seismic risk curve of the intake tower is extracted for the reservoir site by considering four different source models and updated fragility function, which can be effectively used for the risk management and mitigation of reservoir.

• Geosystem Engineering
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.318-325
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• 2018

Eight tight sandstone reservoir samples from $He_8$ and $Shan_1$ Formations of the Sulige Gas field were selected to perform gas-water micro-displacement experiment based on authentic sandstone micro-model. The gas pressure-relief experiment was proposed for the first time to simulate the pressure change and gas-water percolation characteristics in the process of gas exploitation. The experiment results show that: (1) In the process of gas accumulation, the gas preferentially flows into the well-connected pores and throats with large radius, but rarely flows into the area without pores and throats. (2) Under sufficient gas drive, the water in pores and throats usually exists in the forms of 'thin water film', 'thick water film', and 'water column', but under insufficient gas drive, gas fails to flow into new pathways in time, so that the reservoirs with large pores and throats are high in water cut. (3) Under the same water saturation, the reservoirs with better petrophysical properties has higher gas recovery factor within unit time. Under the same petrophysical conditions, the reservoirs with lower water saturation show higher gas recovery factor within unit time. The higher the permeability, the stronger the liquid carrying capacity of reservoirs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2021.10a
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• pp.297-299
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• 2021

Predicting future productivity of tight oil is an important task for analyzing residual oil recovery and reservoir behavior. In general, productivity prediction is made using the decline curve analysis(DCA). In this study, we intend to propose an effective model for predicting future production using deep learning-based recurrent neural networks(RNN), LSTM, and GRU algorithms. As input variables, the main parameters are oil, gas, water, which are calculated during the production of tight oil, and the type curve calculated through various cluster analyzes. the output variable is the monthly oil production. Existing empirical models, the DCA and RNN models, were compared, and an optimal model was derived through hyperparameter tuning to improve the predictive performance of the model.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.367-381
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• 2019

We investigate pore pressure conditions and reservoir compaction associated with oil and gas production using 3 different permeability models, which are all based on one-dimensional radial flow diffusion model, but differ in considering permeability evolution during production. Model 1 assumes the most simplistic constant and invariable permeability regardless of production; Model 2 considers permeability reduction associated with reservoir compaction only due to pore pressure drawdown during production; Model 3 also considers permeability reduction but due to the effects of both pore pressure drawdown and coupled pore pressure-stress process. We first derive a unified stress-permeability relation that can be used for various sandstones. We then apply this equation to calculate pore pressure and permeability changes in the reservoir due to fluid extraction using the three permeability models. All the three models yield pore pressure profiles in the form of pressure funnel with different amounts of drawdown. Model 1, assuming constant permeability, obviously predicts the least amount of drawdown with pore pressure condition highest among the three models investigated. Model 2 estimates the largest amount of drawdown and lowest pore pressure condition. Model 3 shows slightly higher pore pressure condition than Model 2 because stress-pore pressure coupling process reduces the effective stress increase due to pore pressure depletion. We compare field data of production rate with the results of the three models. While models 1 and 2 respectively overestimates and underestimates the production rate, Model 3 estimates the field data fairly well. Our result affirms that coupling process between stress and pore pressure occurs during production, and that it is important to incorporate the coupling process in the permeability modeling, especially for tight reservoir having low permeability.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.9
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• pp.973-980
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• 2015

With their wide geographical distribution, unconventional resources are continuously compared against conventional resources, but their development is expanding because TRRs (Technical Recoverable Resources) are similar to conventional resources. In particular, there is active development of unconventional gas resources such as shale gas, tight gas, CBM (coalbed methane) and gas hydrate. However, it is difficult to calculate the material properties of unconventional resources, especially the gas content, with current geophysical logging technology. Additionally, some overseas companies have monopolies on related equipment and materials. Therefore, this study developed a reservoir PCS (Pressure Core Sampler). It can collect core samples without gaseous loss by maintaining high pressure from the moment the core is sampled and record pressure and temperature in real time. Successful performance testing was also carried out for official verification of the manufactured PCS. The reservoir PCS will contribute to the acquisition of geophysical well logging data as well as accurate and reliable cores.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2021

The hydraulic fracturing developed to improve permeability of tight reservoir is one of key stimulation technologies for developing unconventional resources such as shale gas and deep geothermal energy. The experimental study was conducted to improve disadvantage of hydraulic fracturing which has simple fracture pattern and poor fracturing efficiency. The fracturing experiments was conducted for tight rock using various fracturing fluids, water, N2, and CO2 and the created fracture pattern and fracturing efficiency was analyzed depending on fracturing fluids. The borehole pressure increased rapidly and then made fractures for hydraulic fracturing with constant injection rate, however, gas fracturing shows slowly increased pressure and less fracture pressure. The 3D tomography technic was used to generate images of induced fracture using hydraulic and gas fracturing. The stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) was estimated increment of 5.71% (water), 12.72% (N2), and 43.82% (CO2) respectively compared to initial pore volume. In addition, permeability measurement was carried out before and after fracturing experiments and the enhanced permeability by gas fracturing showed higher than hydraulic fracturing. The fracture conductivity was measured by increasing confining stress to consider newly creating fracture and closing induced fracture right after fracturing. When the confining stress was increased from 2MPa to 10MPa, the initial permeability was decreased by 89% (N2) and 50% (CO2) respectively. This study shows that the gas fracturing makes more permeability enhancement and less reduction of induced fracture conductivity than hydraulic fracturing.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.169-179
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• 2013

Well testing in unconventional reservoirs, such as tight or shale gas formations, presents considerable challenges. It is difficult to estimate the reservoir properties in ultra-low permeability formation because of poor inflow prior to stimulation and excessive test duration. Moreover, radial flow may not develop in hydraulically fractured horizontal wells. For these reasons, the cost of test is high and the accuracy is relatively low. Accordingly, industry is turning to an alternate testing method, diagnostic fracture injection test (DFIT), which is conducted prior to the main hydraulic fracture treatments. Nowadays, DFIT are regarded as the most practical way to obtain good estimates of reservoir properties in unconventional reservoirs. Various methods may be used for interpreting DFIT data. This paper gives an explanation of those methods in detail and examines three actual field data. These show how various analysis methods can be applied to consistently interpret fracture closure pressure and time, as well as before and after closure flow regimes and reservoir properties from field data.