Meet Nick Holloway of IHS who is a featured speaker at the APPEX Global 2016 Conference and Exhibition in March in London, England. This paper sets out to examine the potential of horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing being used outside of North America and present some preliminary ideas about the scale of the opportunities.
Meet Ben Sayers of TGS who is a featured speaker at the APPEX Global 2016 Conference and Exhibition in March in London, England. This talk will focus on the success and geology of the MSGBC basin.
Presented by two of the world’s largest professional societies, ICE Cancun offers a platform of unmatched exposure for the geosciences community and for you, your company and/or your institutions ideas, innovations and breakthroughs.
Looking for hassle free, cost-effective ways to keep your employees and your company competitive during the industry downturn? AAPG can provide you with customized in-house courses offered at reasonable rates.
The long-term projections have changed little in the year since this column last reported on the annual International Energy Agency (IEA) “World Energy Outlook,” but the tone is much different. Last year’s report was concerned about finding the investments to meet demand; now the world has surpluses of oil and gas and a booming renewables industry.
In the interest of continuing my theme of “Spreading the Word” about AAPG’s Division of Professional Affairs, here’s an update on some exciting events organized by DPA members for the spring of 2016. Many of you may be familiar with the Playmaker concept, as we have previously held five very successful events.
Since shale plays began revolutionizing the oil and gas industry, North America has been the dominant continent in making them successful. But a strong contender some 5,000 miles south of the U.S. border is beginning to turn heads.
While many are working to forecast when the price of oil might reach $80 a barrel again, renowned international strategist and geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan, the author of “The Accidental Superpower,” predicts in stunning detail the rising and declining energy plays of 2025 and the countries that will ultimately triumph as the world’s leading producers.
Registration deadline for workshop field trip is 12 January 2016 - don't miss your chance to explore the Natih Formation Source Rocks.
The AAPG “Carbonate Reservoirs of the Middle East” GTW took place 23-25 November 2015 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Production from unconventional petroleum reservoirs includes petroleum from shale, coal, tight-sand and oil-sand. These reservoirs contain enormous quantities of oil and natural gas but pose a technology challenge to both geoscientists and engineers to produce economically on a commercial scale. These reservoirs store large volumes and are widely distributed at different stratigraphic levels and basin types, offering long-term potential for energy supply. Most of these reservoirs are low permeability and porosity that need enhancement with hydraulic fracture stimulation to maximize fluid drainage. Production from these reservoirs is increasing with continued advancement in geological characterization techniques and technology for well drilling, logging, and completion with drainage enhancement. Currently, Australia, Argentina, Canada, Egypt, USA, and Venezuela are producing natural gas from low permeability reservoirs: tight-sand, shale, and coal (CBM). Canada, Russia, USA, and Venezuela are producing heavy oil from oilsand. USA is leading the development of techniques for exploring, and technology for exploiting unconventional gas resources, which can help to develop potential gas-bearing shales of Thailand. The main focus is on source-reservoir-seal shale petroleum plays. In these tight rocks petroleum resides in the micro-pores as well as adsorbed on and in the organics. Shale has very low matrix permeability (nano-darcies) and has highly layered formations with differences in vertical and horizontal properties, vertically non-homogeneous and horizontally anisotropic with complicate natural fractures. Understanding the rocks is critical in selecting fluid drainage enhancement mechanisms; rock properties such as where shale is clay or silica rich, clay types and maturation , kerogen type and maturation, permeability, porosity, and saturation. Most of these plays require horizontal development with large numbers of wells that require an understanding of formation structure, setting and reservoir character and its lateral extension. The quality of shale-gas resources depend on thickness of net pay (>100 m), adequate porosity (>2%), high reservoir pressure (ideally overpressure), high thermal maturity (>1.5% Ro), high organic richness (>2% TOC), low in clay (<50%), high in brittle minerals (quartz, carbonates, feldspars), and favourable in-situ stress. During the past decade, unconventional shale and tight-sand gas plays have become an important supply of natural gas in the US, and now in shale oil as well. As a consequence, interest to assess and explore these plays is rapidly spreading worldwide. The high production potential of shale petroleum resources has contributed to a comparably favourable outlook for increased future petroleum supplies globally. Application of 2D and 3D seismic for defining reservoirs and micro seismic for monitoring fracturing, measuring rock properties downhole (borehole imaging) and in laboratory (mineralogy, porosity, permeability), horizontal drilling (downhole GPS), and hydraulic fracture stimulation (cross-linked gel, slick-water, nitrogen or nitrogen foam) is key in improving production from these huge resources with low productivity factors.
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