Shale gas production

Recent advances in drilling and fracking technologies have made the access to huge deposits of natural gas in shale deposits technically and economically feasible. These are located across the United States and elsewhere [19,20], and thus shale gas production has grown about 48% per year from 2006 to 2010 in the United States. This fact will influence the American and the world energy outlooks for the near future, together with the variation in the oil price [21]. The... 

Recent breakthroughs also concern the development of pure bio-based products identical to the petroleum-based materials (PE, PP, PA-6, PA-6,6, polyisobutylene etc.). The economic outcomes of these initiatives are clearly dependent on the global energy supply. The recent enhancement of shale gas production, including the production of so-called wet gases such as butane, propane and ethane, will deeply influence the economic perspectives of bio-PE and bio-PP. ... 

The Barnett Shale formation is located in the Fort Worth Basin of north-central Texas. It is a Mississippian-age black shale occurring at a depth of 6500 to 8500 feet (Table 5.2) and is bounded by limestone formations above (Marble Falls Limestone) and below (Chappel Limestone) (Figure 5.2). With 15,306 wells drilled or pending, the Barnett Shale was the most prominent shale gas play in the United States, but the Flaynesville Shale gas play has surpassed Barnett in shale gas production (Railroad Commission of Texas, 2009 ... 

Gaudlip, A.W., Paugh, L.O., and Hayes, T.D. (2008). MarceUus Shale water management challenges in Pennsylvania, in Proceedings of SPE Shale Gas Production Conference, Fort Worth, TX, November 16-18, 2008. Society of Petroleum Engineers, Allen, TX. 

CERCLA Section 101(14) excludes certain substances from the definition of hazardous substance, thus exempting them from CERCLA regulation. These substances include petroleum, meaning crude oil or any fraction thereof that is not specifically listed as a hazardous substance, natural gas, natural gas liquids, liquefied natural gas, and synthetic gas usable for fuel. If a release of one of these substances occurs, CERCLA notification is not required. Thus, CERCLA reporting will only apply to shale gas production and processing sites if hazardous substances other than crude oil or natural gas are spilled in reportable quantities such are not usually present at these sites. 

Currently, shale gas production facilities are not covered by federal EPCRA Section 313 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting. However, some states require hydraulic fracturing companies to publicly disclose the chemical composition of their fracking fluids, and many more are considering requiring disclosure. 

The Department of Energy also transferred two of the Naval Oil Shale Reserves in Colorado to the Department of the Interior s Bureau of Land Management. Like other federally owned lands, these properties are offered for commercial mineral leasing, primarily for natural gas production and future petroleum exploration. 

Devonian Shales. The large eastern Devonian gas shales resource base underlies approximately 174,000 square miles (453,000 km2) of the eastern U.S. Estimates of recoverable gas range from 2 to 15% of the gas m place. Natural gas has been produced from these shales for decades. Well production rates are relatively low, but after the first few years of production it does not usually decline rapidly with time. A major constraint to present-day exploitation has been the extraordinary inability to predict with confidence the gas production rates that may be obtained in wells drilled outside the traditional production areas. Presently, the GRI is studying the systematics of historically successful fields, including the Appalachian, Illinois, and Michigan Basins. 

The source of hydrogen for coal liquids production could be, as in the case of shale oil production, either the gas or the bottoms product from the liquids plant. Again, the choice of feedstock for hydrogen production will be dictated by economic, market, and environmental considerations. 

Oil shale represents an enormous reserve of fossil fuel for domestic and foreign needs (1,2). Shale oil production can be divided into direct and indirect heating processes (2). In direct heating, some of the products or some other fuel is combusted to raise the oil shale to the necessary temperature for conversion to gas and oil while an indirect process transfers heat from an outside source. Although high yields have been demonstrated in some indirect procedures (3), the application to in situ retorting has been limited. Direct processes developed for in situ recovery of shale oil have not demonstrated sufficient control of the underground combustion for reliable operation. 

Fig. 23. Rate of gas production from oil shale (open points) and kerogen (shaded points), o, H2 a, CO o, CH4 v, C2H ...

Table II gives the product distribution for thermal cracking of shale oil. We defined oil as the sum of condensed oil and C5-C9 hydrocarbons in the gas. The amount of each gaseous product was determined from the slope of the curve plotting gas production versus cracking loss (conversion) (14). The amount of coke produced was determined by difference, but it agreed well with the measured value for the few experiments in which carbon was analyzed in the shale from the bottom reactor. The alkene/alkane ratios in the gas depended more strongly on the cracking temperature than on the extent of conversion. This topic is discussed in greater detail in another paper published in these proceedings (20).

In this overview, however, it should be noted that recent developments in the area of sources and production of shale gas (mainly in C1-C3) completely blnr a vision of the future which was already fairly complex to sketch. 

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