Unconventional shale reservoirs have greatly contributed to the recent surge in petroleum production in the United States and are expected to lead the US oil production to a historical high in 2018. The complexity of the rocks and fluids in these reservoirs presents a significant challenge to the traditional approaches to the evaluation of geological formations due to the low porosity, permeability, complex lithology and fluid composition. NMR has emerged as the key measurement for evaluating these reservoirs, for quantifying their petrophysical parameters, fluid properties, and determining productivity. Measurement of the T1/T2 ratio by 2D NMR has been found to be critical for identifying the fluid composition of kerogen, bitumen, light/heavy oils, gases and brine in these formations. This paper will first provide a brief review of the theories of relaxation, measurement methods, and data inversion techniques and then will discuss several examples of applications of these NMR methods for understanding various aspects of the unconventional reservoirs. At the end, we will briefly discuss a few other topics, which are still in their developmental stages, such as solid state NMR, and their potential applications for shale rock evaluation.

中文翻译：

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核磁共振在非常规页岩储层中的应用——一个新的多孔介质研究前沿

非常规页岩油藏对近期美国石油产量的激增起到了很大的推动作用，预计2018年美国石油产量将创历史新高。这些油藏中岩石和流体的复杂性对传统的石油开采提出了重大挑战。由于低孔隙度、低渗透率、复杂的岩性和流体成分，评估地质构造的方法。核磁共振已成为评估这些储层、量化其岩石物理参数、流体特性和确定生产力的关键测量方法。已发现通过 2D NMR 测量 T1/T2 比率对于识别这些地层中干酪根、沥青、轻/重油、气体和盐水的流体成分至关重要。本文将首先简要回顾弛豫理论、测量方法和数据反演技术，然后将讨论这些 NMR 方法在理解非常规储层的各个方面的几个应用示例。最后，我们将简要讨论一些其他仍处于发展阶段的主题，例如固态核磁共振，以及它们在页岩岩评价中的潜在应用。