Is organic pore development in gas shales influenced by the primary porosity and structure of thermally immature organic matter

Abstract Organic matter (OM)-hosted pores, rather than mineral-hosted pores, are considered to be the dominant contributors to total porosity and hydrocarbon storage in many organic-rich unconventional reservoirs. OM-hosted pores are thought to develop during thermal maturation as generated hydrocarbons are expelled from the kerogen, leaving behind pores. However, prediction of OM-hosted pore development is hampered by the lack of a simple relationship between thermal maturity and OM-hosted porosity, with the controls on pore distribution, size and morphology remaining poorly known. In particular, the extent to which thermally immature OM hosts primary pores and the influence that these have on subsequent organic pore development remains poorly understood. Here we employ Ar ion beam polishing and high resolution scanning electron microscopy to show that primary OM-hosted pores are common in thermally immature shales of varying ages and depositional settings, where they occur in both structured and amorphous OM. We further find, utilising a thermal maturity gradient in the Devonian-Mississippian Woodford Shale, that although OM-hosted pores are common in the least mature (

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Organic Geochemistry

• Publication date

  2015-10-01

• Fields of study

  Geology, Chemistry, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.ORGGEOCHEM.2015.07.010
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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