Shale

The Marcellus Shale Play is a black shale formation lying under the Appalachian Basin running from Tennessee to New York. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that 1,953 billion cubic feet of recoverable reserves lie beneath the shale sediment. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2012) The EIA estimates that shale basins in the United States have a potential to produce from 500-1,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2012). Natural Gas production has risen so dramatically that the U.S. imports fell to just 4% of its energy consumption. The U.S. imported 16% in 2012 and 30% in 2005 (U.S. Energy Infomation Administration, 2014). Until 2008 the Marcellus Shale Play was deemed unrecoverable. Advances in technology, namely hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” and increased demand, have made the Marcellus Shale Play a viable economic opportunity. In 2007, energy exploration companies began establishing a presence in the…

Introduction To extract shale oil from up to 750 meters below the surface of a location on the Western slope in Colorado, the trapped organic matter (kerogen) must be slowly heated over a period of several years. Heater(s) will be placed throughout the rock shale to increase the temperature to as close to 400 C as possible without going over. As the organic matter is cooked, it needs to be contained by setting up a freeze wall consisting of a closed-loop piping system with cooled liquid. This…

Scope The purpose of this project is to summarize the Montney shale gas play that Progress Energy is operating in. We will be looking at and comparing the different wellbore designs they have, such as lengths, casing sizes, stages, frac tonnage. We will also be analyzing 8 wells in the Lily area and provide thorough information on well architecture, interval problems, number of bits/trips, and a day’s vs depth for all eight wells. We are going to analyze on the eight-well pad, located in…

Shale gas and oil plays have been the focus of activity in the United States for the past 15 years. Barnett Shale successes prompted extensive commercial expansion of shale oil and gas activity (Curtis 2002; Browning et al. 2013). As the testing ground for new technologies, Barnett Shale has an extensive experimental history of various drilling and hydraulic fracture methodologies that have been successfully transferred to other shale plays (Grieser et al. 2006; Samuelson et al. 2012; Browning…

SAMPLE PREPARATION: Wilcox shale and Pottsville shale samples are tested with the indentation method in this experiment. Both samples are quartz rich and silty shales which contain about 45 to 50% of quartz, 40 to 45% of clays and about 5% of plagioclase. Wilcox shale sample is from Louisiana and formed in upper Cretaceous while Pottsville shale samples are from Alabama and formed in upper Pennsylvanian. These two type of shale rocks are chosen because they are “local” rocks which was abundant…

thickest formation of surface bedrock in this area at about two hundred and fifty meters thick. This formation is a layer of shale ranging in color, mainly a…

November the 21st, I visited the Gypsum mine with my lab group: Luke Petro, Liz Morehead, and Kylie Hoef, along with several other groups. After procuring the necessary tools from the geology lab like a meter stick, rock hammer, flashlight, bottle of acid, and helmet, we set off to the mine. Located roughly 100 feet below the surface near Grand Rapids, the mine is now a storage facility owned by Michigan Natural Storage. In the mine, we measured the various rock columns to find how large the…

marine shale environment and in an alluvial fan. Sea level regression happened. The size of grain for this rock is around the size of clay. Our next stop is the most exciting as is in the time of the dinosaurs. We have travelled to the Morrison formation which is dated to be 150 million years old and the rocks have grain of sizes between clay-sized and 1mm. The Morrison formation has inconsistent lateral thickness as it has thick layers and goes down to thin layers and has tightly compressed…

The shale oil introduction in the oil market has made a gigantic impact in terms of the supply, demand and prices. This evolution might affect the major players in the market for the short and long run. However, there are a number of crucial factors that affect this advance process in extracting shale oil. First, the break-even price for United States’ shale oil is from 30$ per barrel to 90$ per barrel. In contrast, Saudi Arabia crude oil break-even price is 10$ per barrel according to…

Shale of the Appalachian Basin With various depositional environments and the understanding of sea level change, the Appalachian Basin formed by the collision of tectonic plates and sediment accumulation under the Earth’s surface. The Appalachian Mountains reveal subsidence belts, faulted marine sedimentary rocks and other geologic rocks in these tectonic settings. The Basin exists in the northeastern states of North America. This large rock formation exhibits collisional tectonics with modern…