Explorer Historical Highlights

When one of us joined Royal Dutch Shell in 1980, seven out of 27 young professionals in the basic training course were Swiss – a remarkable number of students from a tiny country that does not produce oil or gas. The term “Swiss mafia” was coined by our Dutch colleagues, and it wasn’t meant in a complimentary sense.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Registration is now open for the 4th annual Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) to be held Aug. 1-3 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Learn! Blog

Welcome to a prestigious conference that features the most recent scientific and engineering breakthroughs in the development of tight sand and shale plays in western China. The developments and lessons learned here have great relevance to shale and low permeability reservoirs worldwide. The conference will take place July 15-17 in Chengdu, China.  Abstracts accepted now.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Learn! Blog

Here are areas of often-overlooked opportunities that could be a perfect fit for the small independent or new team of independent geoscientists / engineers / landmen / petroleum accountants.  This article, which is excerpted from a larger study, is not intended to be all-inclusive, but is a starting point.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Director’s Corner

Have you made plans to attend ACE this year? AAPG’s 2016 Annual Convention and Exhibition (ACE) is a dedicated opportunity for our members and other professionals to get together.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Touted as a “revolutionary” fault-imaging attribute, Thinned Fault Likelihood (TFL) is proving to be a relatively new and successful tool for revealing sweet spots and fracture proximity in highly faulted formations, said AAPG member Hesham Refayee, a geoscientist at dGB Earth Sciences.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Learn! Blog

The forum is sponsored by the DPA in conjunction with two local societies, the Pittsburgh Geological Society (PGS) and the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists (PAPG). This one-day event will be preceded with a PAPG monthly dinner meeting on the evening of April 12, 2016; providing an opportunity to come to Pittsburgh the day prior to the forum, network with local geoscientists and enjoy an Appalachian Basin technical talk.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Africa Blog

AAPG Africa Region GTW Egypt is quickly approaching and the early bird pricing has been extended to 10 March - be sure to take advantage of this discount.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Historical Highlights

The Ayoluengo field was the first commercial oil discovery in Spain and more than 50 years later remains the only onshore oilfield in the Iberian Peninsula. The field was discovered in 1964 and is still producing.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

The main goal for shale resource characterization is usually the identification of sweet spots, which represent the most favorable drilling targets. Such sweet spots can be identified as those pockets in the target formation that exhibit high total organic carbon (TOC) content, as well as high brittleness. As there is no direct way of computing TOC using seismic data, we adopt indirect ways for doing so.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

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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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

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