—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,...

This paper presents a novel Bayesian-based method for predicting brittleness. The involves synthesizing petrophysical data from multiple well cores to establish joint Gaussian distribution function shale facies and non-shale facies. Furthermore, Bayesian classification is applied seismic data. proposed combines with Rickman brittleness obtain new index. are utilized enhance the differentiation ...

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...

Shale formations show obvious anisotropic characteristics in their mechanical properties due to pronounced bedding planes and natural fractures. This anisotropic behavior generally creates complex fracturing networks and is crucial to gas shale stimulation. Although much research has been done to study the anisotropic compression behaviors of shale with static and quasi-static strain rates, the...