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Mind games: Some strategies are better than others when it comes to involvement in unconventional resources. Think about that.
This seems like the perfect time to summarize Canadian oil and gas activity in 2012.
I can remember hearing, way back in 1977, the president of a major oil company that I worked for say that the United States had run out of oil and gas – there was not much left to find and develop.
3-D seismic data are being viewed as the way to reduce drilling cost overruns and maximize ultimate recovery from a shale-producing field – and for relatively minimal additional cost.
A regional database of more than 3,500 producing Eagle Ford wells is helping to highlight production trends and optimal engineering parameters.
What happens in the reservoir following hydrofracturing? Microseismic monitoring is providing some important answers.
Geophysical interpretation is playing a major role in optimizing production performance via well placement, especially in tight oil reservoirs.
Brittenham's discussion of our article on the geologic analysis of the Haynesville Shale in east Texas and western Louisiana pertains to the original discovery of the Haynesville shale play. We welcome Brittenham's clarification of the function that Encana played in developing the Haynesville and Bossier shale plays as representative of Encana Corporation at that time. Establishing who discovered a play first seems to be quite subjective because of the limited public knowledge contained in publications, talks, and listings of wells and targeted horizons (e.g., state rosters, databases [e.g., IHS, Drilling Info]). Hammes et al. (2011) referred to an AAPG Explorer article by Durham (2008), which was the only published source that referred to the discovery of the play during the writing and submission of our article. Unfortunately, Brittenham's presentations (Brittenham, 2010a, b) at the AAPG 2010 and Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists 2010 conventions postdated the submission and acceptance dates of the Hammes et al. (2011) article. Until then, resources to the general public were limited to industry Web sites, hearsay, and limited published articles mostly in journals that are not peer reviewed (e.g., AAPG Explorer, Houston Geological Society Bulletin). Furthermore, unless you attended Brittenham's talks, it is not apparent from his slide presentation that Encana was the first one that discovered the play. Our article submitted in 2010 and published in 2011 was based on the best information available to us at the time. A discussion about the discovery of the mid-Bossier Shale was beyond the scope of our article. We appreciate the author's attempt to clarify the discovery history of the Haynesville play, but alternative interpretations by other operators might still be possible. We are also looking forward to additional contributions from Encana, Chesapeake, and other operators that will increase our knowledge of this highly important gas province.
The AAPG Energy Minerals Division covers many scientific disciplines and interests – and because previous EXPLORER articles featured shale gas and oil shale, this quarter will focus on highlights from this year’s EMD November Mid-Year Meeting Commodity Reports.
Ready, set, drill. Oh, wait, not yet! Just when the United Kingdom’s ban on hydraulic fracturing was lifted, other obstacles arose, making key players have to wait their turn to tackle the country’s potentially inviting shale play.
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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