EMD Resources

AAPG Publications: https://www.aapg.org/publications AAPG Memoirs 97. Shale Reservoirs—Giant Resources for the 21st Century 102. Electron Microscopy of Shale Hydrocarbon Reservoirs 105. Geology of the Haynesville Gas Shale in East Texas and West Louisiana 107. Pinedale Field: Case Study of a Giant Tight Gas Sandstone Reservoir 109. A Color Guide to the Petrography of Sandstones, Siltstones, Shales and Associated Rocks 110. The Eagle Ford Shale: A Renaissance in U.S. Oil Production 112. Imaging Unconventional Reservoir Pore Systems 121. Mudstone diagenesis: Research perspectives for shale hydrocarbon reservoirs, seals, and source rocks Studies in Geology 24. Geology of Tight Gas Reservoirs 30. Deposition of Organic Facies 37. Source Rocks in a Sequence Stratigraphic Framework 52. Jonah Field: Case Study of a Tight-Gas Fluvial Reservoir Hedberg Series 3. Understanding, Exploring, and Developing Tight-gas Sands Resources from AAPG and other organizations AAPG Wiki: https://wiki.aapg.org/Main_Page AAPG Podcasts: https://www.aapg.org/resources/podcast The Society for Organic Petrology: https://www.tsop.org/ TSOP Tight Oil and Gas bibliography by Brian Cardott: https://www.tsop.org/references.html Geological Society of American Energy Geology Division: https://community.geosociety.org/energydivision/home Society of Petroleum Engineers PetroWiki: https://petrowiki.org/ American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/funding-and-awards/grants/prf.html Government resources USGS Undiscovered Resource Assessments: https://www.usgs.gov/energy-and-minerals/energy-resources-program DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory: https://www.netl.doe.gov/ US Energy Information Administration: https://www.eia.gov/ List of state geological surveys: https://www.stategeologists.org/surveys BOE Report (Canada): https://boereport.com/ Indiana Coal Maceral Atlas: https://igws.indiana.edu/Coal/Macerals Texas Railroad Commission: https://www.rrc.state.tx.us/ Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: http://wogcc.wyo.gov/ Utah Department of Natural Resources: https://naturalresources.utah.gov/ Other resources Baker Hughes Rig Count: https://rigcount.bakerhughes.com/ Schlumberger Resource Library: https://www.slb.com/resource-library Crain’s Petrophyiscal Handbook: https://www.spec2000.net/index.htm Shale Profile Blog: https://shaleprofile.com/blog/ AAPG EMD Social Media Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AAPG.EMD LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3712153/

Organic petrography via incident light microscopy has broad application to shale petroleum systems, including delineation of thermal maturity windows and determination of organo-facies. Incident light microscopy allows practitioners the ability to identify various types of organic components and demonstrates that solid bitumen is the dominant organic matter occurring in shale plays of peak oil and gas window thermal maturity, whereas oil-prone Type I/II kerogens have converted to hydrocarbons and are not present. High magnification SEMobservation of an interconnected organic porosity occurring in the solid bitumen of thermally mature shale reservoirs has enabled major advances in our understanding of hydrocarbon migration and storage in shale, but suffers from inability to confirm the type of organic matter present. Herein we review organic petrography applications in the North American shale plays through discussion of incident light photographic examples. In the first part of the manuscript we provide basic practical information on the measurement of organic reflectance and outline fluorescence microscopy and other petrographic approaches to the determination of thermal maturity. In the second half of the paper we discuss applications of organic petrography and SEM in all of the major shale petroleum systems in North America including tight oil plays such as the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Niobrara, and shale gas and condensate plays including the Barnett, Duvernay, Haynesville-Bossier, Marcellus, Utica, and Woodford, among others. Our review suggests systematic research employing correlative high resolution imaging techniques and in situ geochemical probing is needed to better document hydrocarbon storage, migration and wettability properties of solid bitumen at the pressure and temperature conditions of shale reservoirs. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).