Petrophysical Assessment of Australian Organic-rich Shales: Beetaloo, Cooper and Perth basins

Abstract Despite extensive research conducted on North American and Chinese shale plays, fairly little has been reported on Australian gas-shales and no comparative study exists to assess their complexity associated with their geological setting and mineralogical compositions. We thus performed an extensive set of petrophysical characterizations including mineralogy, porosity, permeability, pore size distribution, fracture system, wettability, adsorption capacity, and mechanical properties of four organic-rich shale formations from across major Australian sedimentary basins (Beetaloo, Perth, and Cooper). The results of the petrophysical characterisations reveal that the middle Velkerri formation from Beetaloo basin has the highest potential for future development amongst formations studied in these three basins. Specifically, a) the samples show consistent water wet contact angles despite having fairly different TOC, b) the uniaxial compressive strength is not correlated to the amount of clay content of the samples and c) a positive correlation is observed between the Quartz content and TOC.