ABSTRACT

Shales and mudrocks are significant to all aspects of hydrocarbon exploration and production. They commonly form both source and seal rocks, and in some areas they are also important reservoir rocks. In reservoir development, they may control production performance by compartmentalizing or baffling reservoir sandstones. Often, significant shales are beneath seismic resolution or detection limits, so their impact on reservoir performance is unrecognized until field development. Shale stochastic modeling is a useful technique for predicting production performance in reservoirs where shales and mudrocks are present.

Future research should be directed toward understanding why shales and mudrocks vary in their capacity to seal or compartmentalize strata, toward developing recognition criteria to differentiate various shale types, and toward enhancing their detection on seismic reflection records.