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Officer candidates for the 2009-10 term have been announced by the AAPG Executive Committee.
What makes the Woodford shale play work? Hundreds of wells are about to be drilled to determine if the play is a bust or the next Barnett.
A proposed coal-fueled power plant generated media and political heat for months, but never got off the drawing board last year in Oklahoma.
Round Two: The Coal vs. Gas battle continues, and the combatants come out swinging.
What’s good for the Gulf is good for the mountains, too: 3-D seismic acquisition is proving its value in the rugged Rocky Mountains.
A beautiful enigma: The geological complexity of central Utah may intimidate some, but for many it projects a powerful potential.
“Go West, young man …” and women, too, because there seems to be plenty of work for everyone: The Rocky Mountains beckon to oil and gas players like never before.
Unconventional resources such as coalbed methane will become progressively more important worldwide as population continues to grow at an unprecedented – and possibly unsustainable – rate.
The Energy Minerals Division (EMD) will be sponsoring an unprecedented number of sessions, forums and short courses at the upcoming 2008 AAPG Annual Convention, which will be held April 20-23 in San Antonio.
Fred F. Meissner is an honored exploration geologist and receives the Sidney Powers Memorial Award. Learn more about his achievements and life work.
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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