Rapid growth of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas within the USA and the possibility of shale developments within Europe has created public concern about the risks of spills and leaks associated with the industry. Reports from the Texas Railroad Commission (1999 to 2015) and the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission (2009 to 2015) were used to examine spill rates from oil and gas well pads. Pollutio...

In oil and gas industry, oil is produced from wells drilled into the oil reservoirs. A thorough understanding and characterization of the subsurface is crucial to sustainable management of a reservoir. The subsurface, however, is largely heterogeneous and oil is not present everywhere. For our study area, the reservoir rock is categorized as three facies: brine sand, oil sand and shale, and it ...

Four patients are described in whom pneumoconiosis was diagnosed towards the end of a lifetime's work in shale mines. All developed complicated pneumoconiosis, diagnosed in two cases at necropsy, in one by lobectomy, and in one radiologically. Two of the patients were found at necropsy also to have peripheral squamous lung cancer. The clinical and histological features of the disease resembled ...

We optimized potential parameters in a molecular dynamics model to reproduce the experimental contact angle of a macroscopic mercury droplet on graphite. With the tuned potential, we studied the effects of pore size, geometry, and temperature on the wetting of mercury droplets confined in organic-rich shale nanopores. The contact angle of mercury in a circular pore increases exponentially as po...

Wellbore instability in oil and gas drilling is resulted from both mechanical and chemical factors. Hydration is produced in shale formation owing to the influence of the chemical property of drilling fluid. A new experimental method to measure diffusion coefficient of shale hydration is given, and the calculation method of experimental results is introduced. The diffusion coefficient of shale ...

Railway transportation is playing a key role in the development of many new shale oil and gas reserves in North America. In the rush to develop new shale oil and gas plays, sites for railway transload terminals are often selected on the basis of land availability and environmental constraints before full consideration is given to rail design and operating requirements. The result can be termina...

In April 2011, we published the first peer-reviewed analysis of the greenhouse gas footprint (GHG) of shale gas, concluding that the climate impact of shale gas may be worse than that of other fossil fuels such as coal and oil because of methane emissions. We noted the poor quality of publicly available data to support our analysis and called for further research. Our paper spurred a large incr...