Imaging pore space in tight gas sandstone reservoir: insights from broad ion beam cross-sectioning

Monetization of tight gas reservoirs, which contain significant gas reserves world-wide, represents a challenge for the entire oil and gas industry. The development of new technologies to enhance tight gas reservoir productivity is strongly dependent on an improved understanding of the rock properties and especially the pore framework. Numerous methods are now available to characterize sandstone cores. However, the pore space characterization at pore scale remains difficult due to the fine pore size and delicate sample preparation, and has thus been mostly indirectly inferred until now. Here we propose a new method of ultra high-resolution petrography combining high resolution SEM and argon…