Professor and Team Receive SEG's Honorable Mention in Best Paper Category
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May 29, 2015
Dr. Carlos Torres-Verdin and his research team are receiving an honorable mention in the Best Paper category for the Society of Exploration Geophysicists’ (SEG) 2015 Honors and Awards.
The paper, titled “Pore-Scale Modeling of Electrical Resistivity and Permeability in FIB-SEM Images of Organic Mudrock” was published in SEG’s journal, “Geophysics,” in May 2014 and earned the second-place designation for its description of a new pore-scale method to quantify petrophysical properties of hydrocarbon-bearing shale. A team of Vahid Shabro, Shaina Kelly, Dr. Kamy Sepehrnoori and Dr. Andre Revil (professor, Colorado School of Mines) coauthored the paper.
“This is a great honor because ‘Geophysics’ is a very competitive journal that publishes more than 500 high-quality papers every year,” Torres-Verdin said. “I am personally very proud of this paper because it unveils a new, reliable and accurate method to interpret electrical resistivity measurements performed in organic mudrock.”
Torres-Verdin and his team developed a workflow to apply pore-scale models to focused-ion-beam—scanning-electron-microscope, or FIB-SEM, images of shale formations. These FIB-SEM images help to estimate macroscopic petrophysical properties, such as porosity and permeability, of shale formations in the presence of unconventional fluid transport mechanisms.
Electrical resistivity is one of the most important properties to understand in regard to the rock as it informs engineers about the pore volume of the hydrocarbons in the formation, which leads to accurate prognoses of production.
The study included detailed 3D images of FIB-SEM slices, captured by UT Austin equipment. Those images are a “great technical feat for UT PGE,” Torres-Verdin said.
He will be presented with the award at the SEG Conference in New Orleans, La., on October 18.
