Decreased technological costs and increased efficiency of horizontal drilling has made obtaining natural gas from shale deposits through hydraulic fracturing a viable economic option. However, current estimates of per kWh costs to obtain natural gas through this method do not account for increased environmental risks. By incorporating damages from air and water pollution, the true cost of hydra...

Understanding the controls on the elastic properties of reservoir rocks is crucial for exploration and successful production from hydrocarbon reservoirs. We studied the static and dynamic elastic properties of shale gas reservoir rocks from Barnett, Haynesville, Eagle Ford, and Fort St. John shales through laboratory experiments. The elastic properties of these rocks vary significantly between ...

Dipole sonic log data recorded in a vertical pilot well and the associated production well are analyzed over a 200 × 1100-ft section of a North American gas shale formation. The combination of these two wells enables angular sampling in the vertical direction and over a range of inclination angles from 54° to 90°. Dipole sonic logs from these wells show that the formation’s average properties a...

Hydraulic fracturing is used to increase the permeability of shale gas formations and involves pumping large volumes of fluids into these formations. A portion of the frac fluid remains in the formation after the fracturing process is complete, which could potentially contribute to deleterious microbially induced processes in natural gas wells. Here, we report on the geochemical and microbiolog...

Natural gas from organic rich shales has become an important part of the supply of natural gas in the United States. Modern drilling and stimulation techniques have increased the potential and profitability of shale gas reserves that earlier were regarded as unprofitable resources of natural gas. The most prominent property of shale gas reservoirs is the low permeability. This is also the reaso...

The UK has had its fair share of the shale gas revolutionary waves blowing across the global oil and gas industry at present. Although, its exploitation is widely agreed to have been delayed, shale gas was looked upon favorably by the UK Parliament when they recognized it as genuine energy source and granted licenses to industry to search and extract the resource. This, although a significant p...

Clayrocks, and shales in particular, represent approximately two-third of all sedimentary rocks. In oil and gas drilling operations, shales constitute 80 % of all the drilled sections, mainly because they overlie most hydrocarbon bearing reservoirs. Furthermore, several countries are considering clayrocks as possible host lithologies for radioactive waste confinement, and therefore carrying out...

The deformational properties of gas shale reservoir rocks from the Barnett and Haynesville shale formations were investigated using a triaxial apparatus. The samples tested varied in their mineralogical composition, the degree of diagenesis, the total organic content and the degree of maturity of the organic material. In general, rocks with more cement and less clay show higher elastic moduli, ...