This study estimates the life cycle water consumption and wastewater generation impacts of a Marcellus shale gas well from its construction to end of life. Direct water consumption at the well site was assessed by analysis of data from approximately 500 individual well completion reports collected in 2010 by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Indirect water consu...

Unconventional gas resources from tight sand and shale gas reservoirs have received great attention in the past decade around the world, because of their large reserves as well as technical advances in developing these resources. As a result of improved horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies, the progresses are being made towards commercial gas production from such reservoirs...

During the hydraulic fracturing procedure in shale-gas exploitation, the poroelastic properties of shale formation can be altered significantly. However, it is difficult to evaluate these variations using microseismic field data. In this study, we conduct a hydro-fracturing experiment using Longmaxi shale, which is a major formation for shale-gas production in China, to simulate the water injec...

Hydraulic fracturing of deep shale beds to develop natural gas has caused concern regarding the potential for various forms of water pollution. Two potential pathways-advective transport through bulk media and preferential flow through fractures-could allow the transport of contaminants from the fractured shale to aquifers. There is substantial geologic evidence that natural vertical flow drive...

China is faced up with challenges to foster a competitive shale gas drilling market in recent years. The type of market structure has a closely relationship with the mineral right regime, since mineral ownership decides reasonable returns for entrepreneurial gas firms from their early investments in technology innovations. This paper examines the mineral right regime in China and its impact on ...

Efforts to identify alternative sources of energy have focused on extracting natural gas from vast shale deposits. The Marcellus Shale, located in western New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, is estimated to contain enough natural gas to supply the United States for the next 45 years. New drilling technology-horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing of shale (fracking)-has made gas ...

High-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) has revolutionized the oil and gas industry worldwide but has been accompanied by highly controversial incidents of reported water contamination. For example, groundwater contamination by stray natural gas and spillage of brine and other gas drilling-related fluids is known to occur. However, contamination of shallow potable aquifers by HVHF at depth has ...

The Haynesville Shale is a subsurface rock formation located beneath the Northeast Texas/Northwest Louisiana border near Shreveport. This formation is estimated to contain very large recoverable reserves of natural gas, and during the two years since the drilling of the first highly productive wells in 2008, has been the focus of intensive leasing and exploration activity. The development of na...

The water leak-off during hydraulic fracturing in shale gas reservoirs is a complicated transport behavior involving thermal (T), hydrodynamic (H), mechanical (M) and chemical (C) processes. Although many leak-off models have been published, none of the models fully coupled the transient fluid flow modeling with heat transfer, chemical-potential equilibrium and natural-fracture dilation phenome...