Publications related to Tight oil

Propagation of planar three-dimensional buoyant hydraulic fractures

Hydraulic fractures are driven by an internal fluid pressure exceeding the minimum compressive stress, propagating in a direction perpendicular to the latter. This class of tensile fractures has gained interest over the last fifty years due to the developm ...

EPFL2023

Modeling of solids particle diversion to promote uniform growth of multiple hydraulic fractures

Guanyi Lu

Solid particulate additives are sometimes used to promote the uniform growth of multiple hydraulic fractures in horizontal oil and gas wells. The principle is that solid particulates block, accumulate, and form larger porous plugging zones preferentially a ...

ELSEVIER2023

Long-term biodegradation of crude oil in high-arctic backshore sediments: The Baffin Island Oil Spill (BIOS) after nearly four decades

Ianina Altshuler

With an on-going disproportional warming of the Arctic Ocean and the reduction of the sea ice cover, the risk of an accidental oil spill from ships or future oil exploration is increasing. It is hence important to know how crude oil weathers in this enviro ...

2023

Numerical investigation on water exchange of shale samples

Alessio Ferrari, Sara Incollingo

Interest in the hydraulic and mechanical characterization of shales has grown in recent years, because of their application in the context of energy geotechnics. In the frame of nuclear waste disposal shales are considered as host formations for the placem ...

E D P SCIENCES2020

Petrophysical properties of heavy oil-bearing carbonate rocks and their implications on petroleum system evolution: Insights from the Majella Massif

Carolina Giorgetti

In this work, we investigate the role of hydrocarbons in changing the petrophysical properties of rocks by merging laboratory measurements, outcrops characterization, and subsurface data focusing on a carbonate-bearing reservoir (Bolognano Formation) of th ...

2020

Experimental Assessment of the Impact of Partial Saturation On the Mechanical Properties of Gas Shales

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Alberto Minardi

The impact of partial water saturation on the mechanical behaviour of clays and claystones has been widely proved. This work aims at demonstrating that also for gas shales partial water saturation has a significant influ-ence on their stiffness and strengt ...

2019

Laboratory testing of gas shales in unsaturated conditions

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Alberto Minardi

Water uptake of gas shales is commonly considered one of the most important factors responsible for fluid loss during flowback operations after hydraulic fracturing. Imbibition experiments cover a key role in this context to analyze the impact of several f ...

2018

The impact of the volumetric swelling behavior on the water uptake of gas shale

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Alberto Minardi

Water uptake of gas shales is commonly considered one of the most important factors responsible for fluid loss during flowback operations after hydraulic fracturing. Imbibition experiments cover a key role in this context to analyze the impact of several f ...

2018

Accounting for near-wellbore fracture behavior to unlock the potential of unconventional gas wells

Brice Tanguy Alphonse Lecampion

Despite ongoing engineering efforts, unconventional horizontal gas wells completed with the multi-stage hydraulic fracturing technique are not yet producing to their full potential, as a meaningful proportion of clusters are producing marginally - if at al ...

2018

Gas Shales Testing in Controlled Partially Saturated Conditions

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Alberto Minardi

Laboratory measurement of mechanical properties of gas shales represents a challenging topic in geomechanics due to their peculiar features such as heterogeneity, anisotropy, low permeability, and complex physical phenomena related to the hydro-mechanical ...

2018

Hydro-mechanical characterization of gas shales and Opalinus Clay shale in partially saturated conditions

Alberto Minardi

An experimental study on the behaviour of shales in partially water saturated conditions is presented in this thesis. The Opalinus Clay shale and gas shales from different unconventional reservoirs have been studied. Opalinus Clay is currently considered a ...

EPFL2018

Nonlinear elastic response of partially saturated gas shales in uniaxial compression

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Alberto Minardi

Elastic properties of gas shales are fundamental for the geomechanical characterization of unconventional reservoirs. Due to the presence of microcracks, a non-linear elastic behaviour with hysteresis is usually exhibited when gas shales are subjected to u ...

2018

Cross-talk between emulsion drops: how are hydrophilic reagents transported across oil phases?

Bart Deplancke, Gianluca Nicolas Etienne, Esther Amstad, Antoine Claude Jean Vian, Marjan Biocanin

Emulsion drops are frequently used as vessels, for example, to conduct biochemical reactions in small volumes or to perform screening assays at high throughputs while consuming minimal sample volumes. These applications typically require drops that do not ...

2018

Hydration mediated interfacial transitions on mixed hydrophobic/hydrophilic nanodroplet interfaces

Sylvie Roke, Halil Ibrahim Okur, Nikolay Smolentsev, Rüdiger Scheu, Filip Kovacik

Interfacial phase transitions are of fundamental importance for climate, industry, and biological processes. In this work, we observe a hydration mediated surface transition in supercooled oil nanodroplets in aqueous solutions using second harmonic and sum ...

2018

Plastic-damage modeling of saturated quasi-brittle shales

Lyesse Laloui, Francesco Parisio

The constitutive modeling of shales is an important topic in the geomechanics community as it is often encountered in advanced applications such as nuclear waste storage, CO2 sequestration, and unconventional oil and gas exploitation. The goal of this work ...

Elsevier2017

Dynamic investigation of nutrient consumption and injection strategy in microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) by means of large-scale experiments

Koen Blanckaert

Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) depends on the in situ microbial activity to release trapped oil in reservoirs. In practice, undesired consumption is a universal phenomenon but cannot be observed effectively in small-scale physical simulations due t ...

Springer2015

On the Fluid Retention Properties of Shales

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Valentina Favero

The development of engineering activities involving shales such as the extraction of shale gas and shale oil, the nuclear waste geological storage and the sequestration of CO2, has led to an increasing interest toward the geomechanical behaviour of this ge ...

ASCE2014

First day of an oil spill on the open sea: Early mass transfers of hydrocarbons to air and water

Jeremy Samuel Arey, Jonas Gros, Deedar Nabi

During the first hours after release of petroleum at sea, crude oil hydrocarbons partition rapidly into air and water. However limited information is available about very early evaporation and dissolution processes. We report on the composition of the oil ...

Amer Chemical Soc2014

An Insight into the Fluid Retention Capabilities of Shales

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Valentina Favero

The hydro-mechanical behaviour of shales is becoming one of the most important issues in modern geomechanics, largely driven by petroleum industries (i.e., the extraction of shale gas), the sequestration of CO2 and the nuclear waste geological storage. In ...

2013

Hydrophobic Meshes for Oil Spill Recovery Devices

Francesco Stellacci

Widespread use of petrochemicals often leads to accidental releases in aquatic environments, occasionally with disastrous results. We have developed a hydrophobic and oleophilic mesh that separates oil from water continuously in situ via capillary action, ...

Amer Chemical Soc2013