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The popularity of Don Clarke's talk on induced seismicity took him by surprise. Then, he was asked to give it as an ethics talk leading to him serving as the Distinguished Ethics Lecturer this year.
The Marcellus Shale is considered to be the largest unconventional shale-gas resource in the United States. Two critical factors for unconventional shale reservoirs are the response of a unit to hydraulic fracture stimulation and gas content. The fracture attributes reflect the geomechanical properties of the rocks, which are partly related to rock mineralogy. The natural gas content of a shale reservoir rock is strongly linked to organic matter content, measured by total organic carbon (TOC). A mudstone lithofacies is a vertically and laterally continuous zone with similar mineral composition, rock geomechanical properties, and TOC content. Core, log, and seismic data were used to build a three-dimensional (3-D) mudrock lithofacies model from core to wells and, finally, to regional scale. An artificial neural network was used for lithofacies prediction. Eight petrophysical parameters derived from conventional logs were determined as critical inputs. Advanced logs, such as pulsed neutron spectroscopy, with log-determined mineral composition and TOC data were used to improve and confirm the quantitative relationship between conventional logs and lithofacies. Sequential indicator simulation performed well for 3-D modeling of Marcellus Shale lithofacies. The interplay of dilution by terrigenous detritus, organic matter productivity, and organic matter preservation and decomposition affected the distribution of Marcellus Shale lithofacies distribution, which may be attributed to water depth and the distance to shoreline. The trend of normalized average gas production rate from horizontal wells supported our approach to modeling Marcellus Shale lithofacies. The proposed 3-D modeling approach may be helpful for optimizing the design of horizontal well trajectories and hydraulic fracture stimulation strategies.
A recent story about Shell’s withdrawal from a long-lived project on in situ production of shale oil from oil shale was an interesting example of over-interpretation of a small dataset.
The Distinguished Lecture program, funded in part by the AAPG Foundation, is the Association’s flagship initiative for spreading the latest in science, technology and professional information.
Surprise! Geoscientists make an historic discovery of a huge volcano in the Pacific Ocean – in an area first studied 20 years ago.
Concepts and technologies developed for liquid-rich unconventional plays in North America are on the verge of being exported worldwide.
As shale gas development has boomed over the past decade and public concern about its safety has swelled, both regulatory agencies and operating companies have accelerated their efforts to improve environmental safety.
A valuable study funded by the Texas Water Development Board sets aside the controversy and takes a closer look at hydraulic fracturing and water resources and consumption.
The ultra-deepwater Alaminos Canyon area proved to be a valuable lease purchase in the recent Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale.
Accurate characterization of unconventional reservoirs requires an integrated, multi-faceted approach.
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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