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Bitumen/Heavy Oil (Oil Sands)

Explorer Article

North Africa is not generally known for its elephants – that is, creatures of an animal nature. But recent activity offers hope for elephants of a hydrocarbon nature.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Europe needs a remedy: Years of worry about reliable gas supply from Russia has Europe looking north for gas exploration. Algeria may be just what the doctor ordered.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Sometimes finding the Big One doesn’t call for high-tech applications. Past AAPG president John Amoruso talks about having a concept, which led to the 2004 discovery of his namesake.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

East Texas activity thriving: The Deep Bossier play in the Amoruso Field has all the potential components for a huge gas pay.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Past, but not forgotten: For more than years the untapped 14 potential of Canada’s East Georges Bank Basin has tantalized explorationists – and its day of truth is getting closer.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Commodity prices may have taken a nosedive, at least for the time being, but industry happenings offshore Brazil give reason for the locals – and plenty of other folks – to pop open the bubbly.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Readers Forum

The recent drop in oil and gas prices will make life tougher for those of us working in shale plays such as the Bakken, Barnett, Haynesville, Marcellus, Woodford (U.S.), Domanic (Russia), Mako (Hungary) and many others around the world.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Geophysical Corner

This two-part series describes how Sinopec's local operating company, Southwest Petroleum Branch, utilized full-wave seismic data to improve production from a fractured tight-gas reservoir in XinChang Field, Sichuan Province, China.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Division Column EMD

Gas shales have advanced to an economic gas play since the year 2000 thanks to a combination of high gas prices, shale reservoir characterization and advances in drilling and completion technology.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Twenty-nine audio-video presentations from this year’s AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition in San Antonio have been posted toSearch and Discovery, AAPG’s electronic journal.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
VG Abstract

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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American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

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