Logging identification of high-quality shale of the marine-continent transitional facies: An example of the Shan 2 Member of the Daning-Jixian area in the Ordos Basin

Abstract

On the southeastern margin of the Ordos Basin, the mineral composition of marine-continent transitional facies deposits is complex. The shale, sandstone, coal, and related lithofacies frequently interact, and the lithology changes rapidly in the vertical direction. Due to the low resolution of conventional logging method and borehole enlargement which is a common while drilling, the commonly used methods for identification of lithology including high-quality shale which is prevailing in marine shale gas evaluation are less effective for the study area. First, deconvolution technology was used to improve the resolution of natural gamma rays, gamma rays without uranium and uranium logging curves. Then, a log cross-plot was used to identify the lithology including shale of marine-continent transitional facies, and the uranium-spontaneous potential curve overlap method was proposed to identify high-quality shale from marine-continent transitional facies. The results show that the deconvolution method can effectively improve the vertical resolution of natural gamma rays, gamma rays without uranium and uranium logging curves. The cross-plot of natural gamma-density logging data has a better effect on identifying the lithology of the marine-continent transitional facies, and the cross-plot of uranium logging data and gamma ray data without uranium can further identify three types of shale lithofacies (calcareous siliceous shale, siliceous clay shale and clay shale). In the marine-continent transitional facies, the newly proposed uranium-spontanous potential overlap method is better than the traditional ΔlogR method inidentifying high-quality shale. This research can provide theoretical support for reservoir evaluation of marine-continent transitional shale gas and improve the accuracy of high-quality shale identification