Investigating Heterogeneity of Migrated Petroleum at the Nano-scale in a Chalk Reservoir, Cretaceous Niobrara Formation, Denver Basin, CO
Presented by:
Rebekah E. Simon
Meeting Starts | 12:00 (MT)
Abstract
Low permeability unconventional oil and gas resources may experience formation damage due to the emplacement of viscous hydrocarbons in narrow pore throats during petroleum migration and production. The composition of such pore-clogging hydrocarbons remains under-characterized, as standard analytical techniques in organic geochemistry either lack the spatial resolution to collect chemically specific data in nano-pores, or require extraction and therefore averaging of the suite of compounds that make up bulk crude oil. Correlative imaging of oil-filled nano-pores in Niobrara chalk samples using two novel AFM based techniques—Infrared scattering-Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy (IR s-SNOM), and Scanning Probe Microscopy—provide pixel maps of the chemical and mechanical properties of migrated oil with ~30 nm xy-resolution. These correlative images demonstrate that heterogeneity exists within emplaced hydrocarbons in situ on the scale of hundreds of nanometers, visualized as clusters of hydrocarbon having high adhesive forces and material rigidity. The chemical composition of these clusters remains ambiguous, but their geometry and mechanical properties may imply that they are phase-separated asphaltene preferentially associated with oil-attractive nano-domains on calcite pore walls. Despite outstanding challenges, correlative IR s-SNOM and nano-mechanical imaging offer a promising and novel analytical approach to understanding fluid behavior in nano-porous reservoir rocks and its effects on pore network evolution.
Rebekah (Becky) Simon is currently a geoscientist with ExxonMobil in Houston, TX. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder in May of 2020 for her dissertation completed under the direction of Dr. David Budd. She holds a Master of Science in Geological Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin, and a Bachelor of Science in Geological Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. The work in this presentation was done in collaboration with members of the Center for Ultra-Fast Nano-Optics in the CU Boulder Department of Physics (Raschke, PI).
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