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One year ago this month I was sitting in AAPG’s GEO-DC office at the American Geosciences Institute in Alexandria, Va., when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the state.
What do the numbers indicate when measuring Niobrara tight oil success in Colorado?
Surprise! Ordinarily a target for oil production, the Cretaceous Niobrara formation is proving to be more versatile in Colorado’s Piceance Basin.
What goes up must come …: Despite the seemingly never-ending cycles of boom and bust, operators in the Rocky Mountain region are finding ways to stay in the game.
Spreading the word: Nine speakers have been selected for AAPG’s prestigious Distinguished Lecture program for the 2012-13 North American tours.
No matter where I travel and talk with AAPG members there are two topics that I’m certain will come up in conversation: First the price of natural gas and second the role of shale gas in driving this price.
In North America onshore, the resource play has caused a dramatic shift in the exploration objectives of many, if not most, independent and major petroleum companies.
Shale List Grows: Production from unconventional reservoirs, particularly shale, has been a boon to U.S. domestic natural gas stockpiles.
All for one and one for all: It took a team effort to find exploration success in theWolfcamp Shale.
The third dimension: Continued improvements in new technologies such as 3-D seismic are helping some companies deal with the cost of successful shale exploration.
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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