Natural gas comprises about a quarter of the United States' energy use. It is more environmentally friendly than oil and coal due to lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit, less costly per unit of energy and more readily available domestically in abundant supply. However, due to a number of barriers in the political, infrastructural, pricing and other arenas, the use of natural gas as a ...

The long-term planning of the shale gas supply chain is a relevant problem that has not been addressed before in the literature. This paper presents a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model to optimally determine the number of wells to drill at every location, the size of gas processing plants, the section and length of pipelines for gathering raw gas and delivering processed gas and...

The identification and quantification of methane emissions from natural gas production has become increasingly important owing to the increase in the natural gas component of the energy sector. An instrumented aircraft platform was used to identify large sources of methane and quantify emission rates in southwestern PA in June 2012. A large regional flux, 2.0-14 g CH4 s(-1) km(-2), was quantifi...

This is a summary of state of the art horizontal well technology and a review of the economic benefits of horizontal wells. The paper describes various reservoir applications of horizontal wells from primary recovery to EOR applications. The paper includes field examples of different applications. . Although horizontal wells have been drilled as early as 1927, the major thrust of drilling horiz...

Since natural gas reserves in North America and Europe are declining, energy companies there can no longer create value by just drilling more wells; they must create value by better managing their current production assets, and by better leveraging technology. In this paper, we analyze the real option to pause production from a well (better management) along with the real option to scale produc...

Increasing evidence demonstrates an association between health symptoms and exposure to unconventional natural gas development (UNGD). The purpose of this study is to describe the health of adults in communities with intense UNGD who presented for evaluation of symptoms. Records of 135 structured health assessments conducted between February 2012 and October 2015 were reviewed retrospectively. ...

Downhole drilling motors or mud motors are frequently used during the oil and gas well construction, especially for construction of directional and horizontal segments. However, low operation life of the down hole drilling motors and high rate of wear in their working elements may constrain their application due to technical and economical disadvantageousness. In this work, a high-torque modula...

Designing drilling fluids for drilling in deep gas reservoirs and geothermal wells is a major challenge. Cooling drilling fluids and preparing stable mud with high thermal conductivity are of great concern. Drilling nanofluids, i.e. a low fraction of carbon nanotube (CNT) well dispersed in mud, may enhance the mixture thermal conductivity compared to the base fluids. Thus, they are potentially ...

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...

Directional drilling has evolved over the last few decades to become standard operational practice in the oil and gas exploration industry. One method of steering utilizes a technique known as magnetic Measurement While Drilling (MWD). Vector measurements of geomagnetic fields along a well-bore are used to determine it orientation. This method is advantageous in that it is inexpensive and effic...