Effect of reservoir characteristics on the productivity and production forecasting of the Montney shale gas in Canada: Discussion

Kim et al. (2019) recently presented an analysis of the influence of reservoir and completion parameters on natural gas production from wells drilled and completed in the Montney Formation in Alberta, Canada. A key finding of their study is that one of the reservoir quality parameters, total organic carbon (TOC), has a strong positive linear relationship with peak monthly gas rate. However, their data set incorrectly includes a TOC measurement of a drill-core sample acquired from the unrelated Jurassic Nordegg Member, which unconformably overlies the Triassic Montney Formation. Excluding this single inapplicable Nordegg sample from the Montney data set results in peak monthly gas rate having essentially no significant correlation with TOC, and calls into question the proposal of Kim et al. that productivity in the unconventional Montney gas play can quantified and forecasted solely on the basis of organic carbon content parameters.

Automated summary

Kim et al. (2019) found a positive linear relationship between total organic carbon (TOC) and peak monthly gas rate in the Montney Formation, but inclusion of an unrelated sample from the Nordegg Member disrupted this relationship, questioning the proposal that productivity in the Montney gas play can be solely quantified and forecasted based on organic carbon content parameters.