As conventional resources are depleted, unconventional gas (UG: gas from tight
sands, coal beds, and shale) resources are becoming increasingly important to U.S and
world energy supply. The volume of UG resources is generally unknown in most
international basins. However, in 25 mature U.S. basins, UG resources have been
produced for decades and are well characterized in the petroleum literature. The
objective of this work was to develop a method for estimating recoverable UG resources
in target, or exploratory, basins. The method was based on quantitative relations between
known conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resource types in mature U.S.
basins.
To develop the methodology to estimate resource volumes, we used data from
the U.S. Geological Survey, Potential Gas Committee, Energy Information
Administration, National Petroleum Council, and Gas Technology Institute to evaluate
relations among hydrocarbon resource types in the Appalachian, Black Warrior, Greater
Green River, Illinois, San Juan, Uinta-Piceance, and Wind River basins. We chose these
seven basins because they are mature basins for both conventional and unconventional oil and gas production. We assumed that a seven basin study would be sufficient for
preliminary gas resource analysis and assessment of the new methodology. We
developed a methodology we call PRISE, which uses software that investigates
relationships among data published for both conventional and unconventional resources
in the seven mature U.S. basins. PRISE was used to predict recoverable UG resources
for target basins, on the basis of their known conventional resources. Input data for
PRISE were cumulative production, proved reserves, growth, and undiscovered
resources. We used published data to compare cumulative technically recoverable
resources for each basin. For the seven basins studied, we found that 10% of the
recoverable hydrocarbon resources are conventional oil and gas, and 90% are from
unconventional resources.
PRISE may be used to estimate the volume of hydrocarbon resources in any
basin worldwide and, hopefully, assist early economic and development planning.
PRISE methodology for estimating UG resources should be further tested in diverse
sedimentary basin types.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/86053 |
| Date | 10 October 2008 |
| Creators | Old, Sara |
| Contributors | Holditch, Stephen A. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, born digital |
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