Geomechanics’ value: The deeper we get into shale plays, the more obvious it becomes that no two plays are the same.
Although historically focused on its birthplace in North America, AAPG is growing rapidly in several international locations, including one that is in the heart of the oil industry – the Middle East.
Sorting out the new data types emerging from the unconventional plays has led to new strategies for managing the data and spawned an array of ancillary business opportunities. EXPANDED FOR WEB.
Kinetics and hieroglyphics and pyrolysis! Oh my! Following the traditional method of determining kerogen kinetics is slow and expensive and yields little kinetic data. The new method of one-run kinetics proves to save both time and money while acquiring more data.
Hot, hot, hot: The Niobrara play joins the list of hot shales – even being dubbed the “NeoBakken.” An industry-sponsored consortium evaluates the complexities of this giant play to help further its economic success.
Old habits die hard – Not! The prolific California Monterey shale is revisited, but this time with an unconventional approach.
Shale gas potential heats up in south Texas. Think Eagle Ford shale, or take a drive down U.S. Highway 90 and see for yourself.
Canada’s Horn River Basin has been described as significantly larger than the Barnett shale area in Texas, which currently produces three billion cubic feet per day. Third-party estimates predict the Horn River area could hold 50-100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the hottest resource play in North America.
A whole lotta shakin’ is going on – but the matter of human induced seismicity remains a complex and heavily researched mystery.
With lower gas prices shale plays look more attractive resulting in increased seismic data to help find that liquid component.
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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