May SPE WA Lecture: Unconventional shale gas reservoir characterization of the Goldwyer shale in Canning Basin, Western Australia

The Canning Basin is a large intracratonic – underexplored Palaeozoic sedimentary basin in Western Australia. Wells drilled in this basin generally have low success rates, with less than 5% of wells yielding commercial quantities for production in the conventional realm. This suggests a better strategy may be to target direct development of source rocks using unconventional production techniques. A report from the US Energy Information Administration (2013) suggested that the Canning Basin has the best potential for unconventional hydrocarbon production in Australia and ranked the basin eight in the world for same. This study has utilized an integrated approach to characterize the potential shale reservoir in the Broome Platform, Canning Basin, to understand the geochemical property distribution, including organic richness, maturity and the potential for the source rock to generate hydrocarbon through laboratory analysis and statistical simulations. Furthermore, burial history curves are constructed across the sub-basin, using basin specific organofacies and reaction kinetics. Preliminary integration of these geochemical information lead to the delineation of potential geochemical sweetspots in the studied sub-basin. This study aims to provide additional geochemical information necessary for a potentially successful hydrocarbon exploration campaign.

Presenter: Lukman Johnson, PhD candidate- Curtin University
Lukman Johnson is a third year PhD student in the Unconventional Gas Research Group in the Department of Petroleum Engineering. He holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Petroleum Geosciences from the University of Derby, UK and worked both as a lecturer in the University of Ilorin, Nigeria and as a geologist with Geoverge Nigeria Limited. Lukman’s interests include organic geochemistry, petroleum systems analysis and unconventional shale gas exploration.