Scientists are feverishly working to determine if the desolate land that is southwest Texas' Maverick Basin might develop into the next hot coalbed methane play.
How do you communicate data to all members of multidisciplinary teams in a way they'll understand? One solution: A new processing technique that is based on seismic petrophysics.
Many attempts have been made throughout the history of modern seismic to image thin beds (<1/4 of dominant wavelength) by extracting higher frequencies from seismic. In addition to simply imaging zones below normal resolution, two of the more common goals to aid in reservoir development are: to define pinch-outs of producing zones and to resolve internal bed geometries.
It's been through the best of times, the worst of times and the most uncertain of times. Amazingly, Destin Dome is still a big, tantalizing part of the industry's GOM strategy.
The Gulf of Mexico is the only focus for Houston-based Spinnaker Exploration, which was founded in 1996 with the mission to explore the Gulf using vast, regional 3-D seismic data sets.
Time-lapse, or so-called 4-D, seismic technology is proving its worth as a reservoir management tool -- not just on new fields where the technique is applied from inception, but at all stages of a field's lifecycle.
Talk about a big story. In Denver, one giant talking about other giants drew a giant crowd. The speaker at the podium was legendary oil finder Michel T. Halbouty, a giant of the industry who's been a part of the industry for seven decades, talking about 'Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade -- 1990-2000.'
Scott W. Tinker could be the industry's leading forward-thinker on oil and gas research.
Coalbed methane has become an increasingly important part of America's energy picture over the past two decades, with an estimated 669 trillion cubic feet of CBM in place in the lower 48 states.
Natural gas industry studies project that United States gas consumption will increase in the early years of this century by up to 50 percent from the current 22 trillion cubic feet to in excess of 33 trillion cubic feet by 2015.
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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