Unconventional natural gas resources offer an opportunity to access a relatively clean fossil fuel that could potentially lead to energy independence for some countries. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing make the extraction of tightly bound natural gas from shale formations economically feasible. These technologies are not free from environmental risks, however, especially those rela...

Gas storage fields have numerous wells that are used for both injection during low demand periods and withdrawal during high demand periods. As these wells age, their deliverability declines due to several factors. Stimulation treatments (hydraulic fracturing of the formation) are routinely used in gas industry to improve gas well productivity. This study was conducted on a large natural gas st...

Although Osborn et al. (1) provided important geochemical measurements of dissolved methane in a portion of the Appalachian basin, their report does not fully appreciate the geologic history of this region and misrepresents potential risks of modern drilling and completion techniques used to develop shale-gas resources. The fear that hydraulic fracturing is responsible for methane migration fro...

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...

A multisignal nanosecond synchronous acquisition system to measure acoustic emission (AE) and electromagnetic radiation (EMR) generated during the process of loading failure coal rock samples is established. The correlation between energy AE EMR signals stress outburst coal-rock was studied, characteristics fracturing were analyzed. results show that (1) before samples, fluctuation largest, wit...

The petroleum industry’s use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies has changed organic-rich mudstones, like the Devonian Marcellus Formation, from conventional hydrocarbon sources and seals to unconventional ‘shale gas’ reservoirs. Organic-richness and formation brittleness are two principal components of reservoir quality assessment, as the former is indicative of the am...

explosion has always been regarded as one of the most complicated engineering problems. as a result, many engineers have preferred rather simplified empirical approaches in comparison to extremely complex deterministic analyses. in this paper, however, a numerical simulation based on the combined finite/discrete element methodology is presented for analyzing the dynamic behavior of fracturing r...

In the past decade, there has been a massive growth in the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of shale gas and tight oil reservoirs to exploit formerly inaccessible or unprofitable energy resources in rock formations with low permeability. In North America, these unconventional domestic sources of natural gas and oil provide an opportunity to achieve energy self-sufficiency and to red...

Hydraulic fracturing technology is usually used to stimulate tight gas reservoirs for increasing gas production. The stimulated volume depends in part on the pre-existing natural fractures in a reservoir. The mechanisms influencing the interaction between hydraulic fractures and natural fractures have to be well understood in order to achieve a successful application of hydraulic fracturing. In...