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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.
Industry and academia are teaming up to pump up activity in the Mississippian of the Midcontinent United States.
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general public were limited to industry Web sites, hearsay, and limited published articles mostly in journals that are not peer reviewed (e.g., AAPG Explorer, Houston Geological Society Bulletin).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.
Hammes et al. (2011) provide an excellent technical compilation of the geology of the Haynesville shale-gas play in east Texas and west Louisiana. However, their citation crediting Chesapeake Energy Corporation solely with the commercial discovery and naming the play is poorly founded. The article cited (Durham, 2008) does not support that conclusion beyond the fact that Chesapeake was one of the first to announce the play. Furthermore, Durham's article in the AAPG Explorer did not attempt to document the discovery of the play, but instead was an interview of companies who, at that time, had publicly announced their interest. Brittenham (2010, slide 9) presented the early history of Encana in the play, which predates the activities and announcements by Chesapeake and others. Hammes et al. (2011) also do not mention the significant potential of the mid-Bossier Shale (Brittenham, 2010, slides 16, 20, and 24) that overlies the Haynesville Shale over much of the area mapped by Hammes et al. A summary of the events and timelines from publicly available data sources (IHS Energy) illustrates that, remarkably, at least three companies had an early knowledge of the play, drilled wells in vastly separate areas, and had early well-production test data with sufficient gas flow to credit with discovery. In sequence of drilling, those wells were drilled by the following: Encana Oil and Gas (U.S.A.) Inc. in Red River Parish, Louisiana Penn Virginia Oil Gas LP in Harrison County, Texas Chesapeake Operating Inc., in Caddo Parish, Louisiana Encana discovered the mid-Bossier shale play through its drilling and early evaluation program in western Louisiana, concurrent with its Haynesville evaluation.
The central Black Sea Basin of Turkey is filled by more than 9 km (6 mi) of Upper Triassic to Holocene sedimentary and volcanic rocks. The basin has a complex history, having evolved from a rift basin to an arc basin and finally having become a retroarc foreland basin. The Upper Triassic–Lower Jurassic Akgol and Lower Cretaceous Cağlayan Formations have a poor to good hydrocarbon source rock potential, and the middle Eocene Kusuri Formation has a limited hydrocarbon source rock potential. The basin has oil and gas seeps. Many large structures associated with extensional and compressional tectonics, which could be traps for hydrocarbon accumulations, exist. Fifteen onshore and three offshore exploration wells were drilled in the central Black Sea Basin, but none of them had commercial quantities of hydrocarbons. The assessment of these drilling results suggests that many wells were drilled near the Ekinveren, Erikli, and Ballıfakı thrusts, where structures are complex and oil and gas seeps are common. Many wells were not drilled deep enough to test the potential carbonate and clastic reservoirs of the İnaltı and Cağlayan Formations because these intervals are locally buried by as much as 5 km (3 mi) of sedimentary and volcanic rocks. No wells have tested prospective structures in the north and east where the prospective İnalti and Cağlayan Formations are not as deeply buried. Untested hydrocarbons may exist in this area.
Characterization of oil shale kerogen and organic residues remaining in postpyrolysis spent shale is critical to the understanding of the oil generation process and approaches to dealing with issues related to spent shale. The chemical structure of organic matter in raw oil shale and spent shale samples was examined in this study using advanced solid-state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Oil shale was collected from Mahogany zone outcrops in the Piceance Basin. Five samples were analyzed: (1) raw oil shale, (2) isolated kerogen, (3) oil shale extracted with chloroform, (4) oil shale retorted in an open system at 500C to mimic surface retorting, and (5) oil shale retorted in a closed system at 360C to simulate in-situ retorting. The NMR methods applied included quantitative direct polarization with magic-angle spinning at 13 kHz, cross polarization with total sideband suppression, dipolar dephasing, CHn selection, 13C chemical shift anisotropy filtering, and 1H-13C long-range recoupled dipolar dephasing. The NMR results showed that, relative to the raw oil shale, (1) bitumen extraction and kerogen isolation by demineralization removed some oxygen-containing and alkyl moieties; (2) unpyrolyzed samples had low aromatic condensation; (3) oil shale pyrolysis removed aliphatic moieties, leaving behind residues enriched in aromatic carbon; and (4) oil shale retorted in an open system at 500C contained larger aromatic clusters and more protonated aromatic moieties than oil shale retorted in a closed system at 360C, which contained more total aromatic carbon with a wide range of cluster sizes.
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists sponsored a Hedberg Research Conference on Enhanced Geothermal Systems in Napa, California, March 18 to 23, 2011. The workshop was attended by 67 participants from 10 different countries: United States, Australia, Austria, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Norway.
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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