Lab exam next week

Normal classroom, normal time: 2-5 pm

Bring regular pencil, color pencils may be helpful

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 Lab exam
Question 1
Contour, trap, migration paths

Question 2
Well interpretation and interpolation

Question 3
Petromod-related

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 What are unconventional
resources?
US Department of Energy (DOE):
"unconventional oils have yet to be strictly
defined"
Unconventional resources are hydrocarbon
reservoirs that have low permeability and
porosity and so are difficult to produce
Extracted using techniques other than the
conventional (oil well) method

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 What are unconventional
resources?
IEA (International Energy Agency): In general
conventional oil is easier and cheaper to
produce than unconventional oil. However,
the categories conventional and
unconventional do not remain fixed, and
over time, as economic and technological
conditions evolve, resources hitherto
considered unconventional can migrate into
the conventional category
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4
 What are unconventional
resources?
Often enhanced recovery techniques such as
fracture stimulation or steam injection must
be performed, making the process more
difficult than a conventional play

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5
 Examples of unconventional
resources
Tight Gas
BBOE=
Coalbed Methane (CBM) Billion barrel of oil equivalent

Shale Gas/Shale Oil

Heavy Oil/Tar sands
Methane Hydrates

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 0.6% Ro
1.3%Ro
shale oil

tight gas tight oil

shale gas

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 Tight oil (or gas)

Tight oil/gas is in petroleum-bearing formations

of low permeability, often shale or tight
sandstone
Economic production from tight oil formations
requires the same hydraulic fracturing and often
uses the same horizontal well technology used
in the production of shale gas

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Tight gas basins in North America

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 Tight oil (or gas)
Average reservoir porosity for the producing
units 89%
Average in-situ permeabilities of hundredths
of a millidarcy

The quantity of this gas charge relative to

available pore space in the reservoir system will
dictate the reservoir pressure

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 Tight gas example
Piceance Basin, Colorado
Basin-centered gas play (situated in central,
deeper part of basin)
No relation with traps
Gas formed in situ and trapped in low
permeability reservoirs
A single large field in which the resource
density and producibility may vary both
laterally and stratigraphically
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Assessment based
on well performance

Most gas potential

in Williams Fork
formation (fluvial
sandstones)

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1000s wells,
~50 fields

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 Tight gas example

Bakken Formation, Williston Basin

Low permeability,
but there are
sweet spots with
higher
permeability
(through natural
fracturing for
example)
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Tight oil/gas reservoirs are examples of continuous
accumulations

-source and reservoir coexist

-porosity and permeability are ultra-low
-nano-pore throats are widely distributed
-hydrocarbon-bearing reservoir bodies are
continuously distributed
-no obvious trap boundary
-buoyancy has only a minor effect on migration,
Darcy's law does not apply

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 More about tight gas

Sometimes divided into LP (low porosity) and

HP (high porosity)

HP: porosity 10-40%, permeability <0.1 md

LP: porosity 3-12%, permeability very low

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 Coalbed methane (CBM)
Coal seam gas (CSG)
Coal forms the source, reservoir and seal
Gas (methane, dry gas) is trapped on the
surfaces of organic matter (adsorption)
Fractures or cleats within the coal (normally
filled with water)

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 Coalbed methane
Natural gas extracted from coal beds
Methane is adsorbed (adsorption is adhesion
to a surface) into the solid matrix of the coal

The presence of coalbed

methane has long been
known from mining

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 Coalbed methane
Porosity of coal bed reservoirs 0.1-10%
Adsorption capacity: the volume of gas
adsorbed per unit mass of coal
Expressed in SCF (standard cubic feet, the
volume at standard pressure and
temperature conditions) gas/ton of coal
The capacity to adsorb depends on the rank
and quality of coal. The range is usually
between 100 to 800 SCF/ton for most coal
seams found in the US 19
 Cleats are fractures
in coal beds
During production,
water is pumped off
first

This leads to a reduction of pressure enhancing

desorption of gas from the matrix
In US CBM basins, permeability lies in the range
of 0.150 mD

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 Cleats are
fractures in coal
beds
During
production, water
is pumped off first

This leads to a reduction of pressure enhancing

desorption of gas from the matrix
In US CBM basins, permeability lies in the range
of 0.150 mD

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~21% of US unconventional gas production

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Coalbed methane example

Raton Basin
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 Around 75 Ma: area
covered by an interior
sea
Deposition of marine
shales

Around 70 Ma: sea retreats northeastward

Delta and beach sandstones are deposited
After retreat of the sea: coal-bearing coastal
sediments are deposited. These are source of
coal bed methane
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 60 Ma: Uplift of the region begins during the Laramide
Orogeny
28 Ma: Igneous intrusions are emplaced in the Raton
Basin. These include sills, dikes and stocks

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26
 Shale gas
Natural gas found within shale formations

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 Shale gas
Natural gas found within shale formations
Generally wet (10% ethane), 1200 BTU
Well produces typically 40-50 years
Wells often <700 m deep

Shale gas exploration often not profitable for

major international oil companies

Where found? Where quantity, quality and

maturation of organic matter in shales is good
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 Shale gas
Gas is stored in shales in 3 different manners:
Adsorbed gas (released when formation
pressure declines with production)
Free gas in fractures and pores (produced
immediately)
Dissolved in kerogen

Gas shales provide ~12% of unconventional

gas production

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 Shales have low permeability, and are not
conventional commercial sources of natural
gas
Gas production in commercial quantities
requires fractures to provide permeability
Shale gas has been produced for years from
shales with natural fractures; the shale gas
boom in recent years has been due to
modern technology in hydraulic fracturing
(fracking) to create extensive artificial
fractures around well bores
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Shales that host economic quantities of gas have
a number of common properties:

Rich in organic material (0.5% to 25%)

Mature petroleum source rocks in the
thermogenic gas window
Brittle and rigid enough to maintain open
fractures

Gas is held in natural fractures, in pore spaces,

and adsorbed onto the organic material.
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 Shale gas example
Devonian black shales of the Appalachians

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33
Shales deposited in foreland basin ~400 Ma

Anoxic conditions in closed foreland basin

Shales are extremely organic rich

Shales passed through oil window, then gas

window, hundreds of millions of years ago

Source, reservoir and seal are same and

undisturbed for geologically long times

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 Oil shales
Fine-grained sedimentary rock
that yields oil on heating
Is contained within kerogen

Combustion of oil shale

Heating oil shale to a sufficiently
high temperature causes
pyrolysis to yield a vapor. Upon
cooling the vapor, the liquid
shale oil is separated

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 Oil shales
Extraction: mining and
transportation elsewhere
where shale is burned

Or: in-situ processing

Underground mining of oil shale, using room-and-pillar method 36

 Tar sands and heavy oil
Heavy viscous oil in tar sands, porous sands
API < 20, rich in asphaltenes

Extra heavy crude oil: API < 10

Natural bitumen
even more viscous

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 Oil/tar sands and heavy oil
Natural bitumen/tar sands/oil sands is found at
the margins of geologic basins and is thought to
be the residue of formerly light oil that has lost its
light-molecular-weight components through
degradation

Origin is
controversial

Open mine pit, Canadian oil

sands 38
 Oil/tar sands and heavy oil
Formed, migrated and trapped similar to
conventional oil
But, they have experienced such an advanced state
of alteration that they require unconventional
methods of extraction

Poor sealing exposes the hydrocarbon to surface

contaminants, including organic life (such as
bacteria) and contributes to this process

Often, heavy oil found in young reservoirs (<25 Ma)

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 Oil sands and heavy oil example
Alberta oil sands
Estimated reserves extremely large

Produced after high temperature steam

injections lower the viscosity of the oil

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41
 La Brea tar sands of Trinidad
Petroleum seeps to surface, lighter components
vaporize

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 Gas hydrates
Gas hydrates consist of gas molecules
surrounded by cages of water molecules
In Arctic permafrost areas
Also found deep marine in sediments (high
pressures, low temperatures)

Reserves larger than conventional gas

Production technologies?

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44
Water molecules (1 red
oxygen and 2 white
hydrogens) form a
pentagonal dodecahedron
around a methane
molecule (1 gray carbon
and 4 green hydrogens).

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Found close to continents- why?

Methane ice takes on many forms in

sediments. In fine-grained sediments, the
methane hydrate can form in small pores and
cement the grains, but may not be visible
Gas hydrate has also been recovered in
chunks, in veins within sediments, and
occasionally in large masses
It does not form within a thick seam, like coal
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How does gas hydrate form?

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Gas hydrate recovered in
shallow layers just below
the seafloor during piston
coring in the Gulf of
Mexico
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 How is gas hydrate detected
(without drilling)?
Bottom Simulating
Reflector (BSR)
BSR often follows
seafloor
topography
BSR between fast
seismic velocities
above and slower
below
Indicates bottom of
hydrate zone
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50
 Pennsylvania, 1861

Woodford well Phillips well

Pennsylvanian Historical and Museum Commission

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 Pennsylvania, 1871

>100 derricks!

Pennsylvanian Historical and Museum Commission

Triumph Hill, 1871

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Wednesday and next week:
Review

Final Exam

Saturday May 7
6-9 pm

Workman 101 53