Explorer Emphasis Article

Alberta’s Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is underlain by numerous, stacked coal seams permeated with methane, and contains twice the amount of gas in place than all of the CBM basins in the continental United

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Southwestern Energy Co. of Houston pioneered the Fayetteville shale play on the Arkansas side of the Arkoma Basin.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Challenges in both new and old shale gas plays are forcing operators into innovative approaches.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Coalbed methane can be described as a permeability “challenged” reservoir.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

With this EXPLORER you also received the 2007 Education Catalog, featuring all our course offerings for the upcoming year. Several new short courses and field seminars have been added this year, along with the list of past favorites.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

Call it a Russian miracle. Despite political, environmental and economic pressures, Russia’s Sakhalin oil and gas projects continue to advance.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

Summer NAPE was a sizzlin’ event at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston -- which was sizzlin’ in a whole different way during the “dog days” of late August.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Regions and Sections

The AAPG Eastern Section was founded in 1977 in Washington, D.C., by a council of AAPG associated societies. The Section has been active ever since, holding society-hosted annual meetings at locales throughout the Section and eastern Canada. The Section currently is home to 2,209 AAPG members (1,039 Active, 695 Associate, 298 Student, 163 Emeritus, 11 Honorary and three Life members).

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Article

To some, the academic world of colleges and universities represents Ivory Towers, detached from reality. To the U.S. Department of Energy, they represent a crucial – and practical – research potential.

American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)
Explorer Emphasis Article

There’s nothing quite like a successful field project to demonstrate the commercial viability of a particular technology. So chalk one up for the recently completed wide-azimuth OBS (ocean bottom sensor) node survey over the BP-operated Atlantis field in the challenging deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

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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