Date of Graduation

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering

Committee Chair

Kashy Aminian

Committee Co-Chair

Samuel Ameri

Committee Member

Keith Heasley

Abstract

Nanopores, pores less than 10 nanometers as defined for this study, have significant impact on the flow, production, and storage potential. These impacts, in turn, effect gas-in-place calculations and overall reservoir estimations.;This research studies a dry-gas reservoir in the Marcellus Shale. A dry-gas reservoir exhibits the same behavior as a wet gas reservoir under confinement effects of nanopores. Therefore, the published correlation for estimating the impact of nanopore size on the critical hydrocarbon properties are utilized in this study.;By use of the gas compositional analysis, the effects on the gas-in-place calculations of the confined pores were compared to the traditional reservoir calculations for unconfined pores. After applying the corrections to the critical temperature and pressure, the z-factor was found by the use of a z-factor chart. This z-factor was incorporated into the gas-in-place calculations and created an easily interpreted reservoir result in millions of cubic feet of gas.;Concluding the study, it was found that the gas-in-place calculations deviate by up to 8% when using confined pores versus unconfined pores. The pore sizes of 2nm, 4nm, and 5nm changed the gas-in-place calculation by -8%, 2% and 6% respectively when compared to the unconfined pore size range of 10nm-100nm. The actual field data for the calculations created a simple comparison of gas-in-place calculations of 2nm, 4nm, 5nm, and >10nm pore sizes, yielding 2 MMCF, 2.2 MMCF, 2.3 MMCF and 2.16 MMCF of gas-in-place per acre foot.

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