Water and gas samples were collected from (1) nine shallow groundwater aquifers overlying Marcellus Shale in north-central West Virginia before active shale gas drilling, (2) wells producing gas from Upper Devonian sands and Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale in southwestern Pennsylvania, (3) coal-mine water discharges in southwestern Pennsylvania, and (4) streams in southwestern Pennsylvania and ...

Hydraulic fracturing is a technology used to extract natural gas from shale rock formations found deep beneath the earth. It raises many public health and environmental issues of concern to municipalities and planners, both urban and rural. These issues range from potential water contamination and air pollution to noise, dust, truck traffic, and even minor earthquakes. This article identifies r...

Received: August 15, 2016 Revised: January 11, 2017 Accepted: February 14, 2017 Abstract: Background: Since the fragile anisotropy of shale, it is difficult to carry out laboratory experiments of geostress by shale cores. The existing geostress calculation model that is based on the homogeneous hypothesis also cannot meet the accuracy requirement. Therefore, it is necessary to establish the new...

—Burgess Shale-type fossil assemblages provide a unique record of animal life in the immediate aftermath of the so-called “Cambrian explosion.” While most soft-bodied faunas in the rock record were conserved by mineral replication of soft tissues, Burgess Shale-type preservation involved the conservation of whole assemblages of soft-bodied animals as primary carbonaceous remains, often preserve...

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...

The state of the art of modeling fluid flow in shale reservoirs is dominated by dual porosity models which divide the reservoirs into matrix blocks that significantly contribute to fluid storage and fracture networks which principally control flow capacity. However, recent extensive microscopic studies reveal that there exist massive microand nanopore systems in shale matrices. Because of this,...

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...

This paper presents a mineralogical and chemical investigation of shale deposits from the U.S. Gulf coast in order to document the mechanisms and reactions involved in the diagenetic conversion of smectite into illite. Cuttings from the 1,250 to 5,500 m stratigraphic interval of a well were sorted by grain size and analzyed by x-ray diffraction to assess chemical and mineralogical trends with d...

The Akinbo Formation comprises a sequence of mostly dark, pale-greenish grey, laminated shale, slightly glauconitic shale, sandy shale with subordinate claystone lenses. Selected subsurface samples of the shaly facies as penetrated by Akinside 1582 well in eastern Dahomey basin. were investigated by sedimentological. mineralogical and geochemical parameters to ascertain the hydrocarbon potentia...