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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Economic Geology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1499533
This article is part of the Research Topic Differences in Shale Oil and Gas Reservoirs across Various Sedimentary Environments: Theories and Applications, Volume II View all 7 articles
Controls on lacustrine shale reservoir characteristics: Insights from deposition, diagenesis, and geochemistry in the Jurassic Qianfoya Formation
Provisionally accepted
Lixue Cheng 1,2*
Jun Peng 2- 1 Civil Aviation Flight University of China, Guanghan, Sichuan Province, China
- 2 Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Continental lacustrine shales, distinct from marine shales in reservoir architectures, pose challenges for resource evaluation due to their complex multi-scale controls. The Middle Jurassic Qianfoya (QFY) Formation in the Langzhong-Yuanba (LZ-YB) area of the northeastern Sichuan Basin represents a critical continental shale gas target, yet systematic studies on its reservoir quality drivers remain limited. Through integrated sedimentological, geochemical, and petrophysical analyses of core samples, three dominant sedimentary facies are identified: blocky, banded, and laminated, reflecting depositional energy variations. The formation shows favorable hydrocarbon potential with an average total organic carbon (TOC) content of 1.85%, mineralogically dominated by clay minerals (illite and illite-smectite) and felsic components. Semi-deep lacustrine facies, especially clay-rich lithofacies, demonstrate superior reservoir quality due to enhanced TOC content and pore networks dominated by silty intergranular pores, interlayer pores in clay minerals, intragranular pores in pyrite and microfractures, contrasting with marine shales where organic matter-hosted pores prevail. Key controlling factors include organic matter-clay mineral synergy, depositional environments (anoxic conditions, freshwater influx, and terrigenous input), and diagenetic processes such as clay transformation and recompaction. Laminated facies exhibit optimal reservoir quality compared to blocky or banded types, with positive correlations between clay-organic content and storage capacity.These findings highlight the coupled depositional-diagenetic controls on continental shale reservoirs, providing critical insights for global exploration of analogous lacustrine shale systems.
Keywords: Lacustrine shale, Reservoir characteristics, depositional-diagenetic controls, organic-clay synergy, Qianfoya formation, continental shale reservoirs
Received: 21 Sep 2024; Accepted: 19 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cheng and Peng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lixue Cheng, Civil Aviation Flight University of China, Guanghan, 618307, Sichuan Province, China
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