To explore and develop unconventional petroleum resources, our focus should be on improving Knowledge, Technology, and a deeper comprehension of the natural processes controlling their existence.
To explore and develop unconventional petroleum resources, our focus should be on improving Knowledge, Technology, and a deeper comprehension of the natural processes controlling their existence. The relationship between source-rock maturity, hydrocarbon generation, pressuring and expulsion-fracturing suggests an opportunity in exploration for unrecognized and unlooked-for “unconventional” accumulations of potentially very large regional extent. Theorizing this force of petroleum expulsion and rethinking the whole process that makes the curious case of petroleum-expulsion fractures remarkably explain primary migration of petroleum, high deliverability from organic-rich shales in shale plays and formation of the unconventional pervasive petroleum system.