Camp W.K., Diaz E., Wawak B. (Eds.) Electron Microscopy of Shale Hydrocarbon Reservoirs

AAPG (The American Association of Petroleum Geologists), 2013. —307. — (AAPG Memoir 102). — ISBN 978-0-89181-383-5.Recent advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracture stimulation technology have opened up vast new oil and natural gas sources in shale formations.
The rapid increase in horizontal wells targeting shale formations has demanded an improved understanding of shale hydrocarbon reservoirs by geologists, geophysicists, and engineers, particularly as shale exploration moves away from the traditional dry-gas fairways in response to declining domestic natural gas prices in search for more liquid hydrocarbon-rich regions. Many traditional reservoir analytical methods fail to accurately characterize shale reservoirs because of their complexity, small (micro- to nanometer) pore size and low (micro- and nanodarcy) permeability. Shale, and its nonfissile counterpart mudstone, are fine-grain sedimentary rocks composed of silt- and clay-size particles. Because of their extremely fine grain size (,62 μm), shale and mudstones are difficult to observe and describe using conventional optical microscope techniques. Fortunately, the highmagnification capability of electron microscopy is ideally suited to study fine-scale rock features, such as texture, composition, and porosity, down to the nanometer scale. Recent advances in electron microscopy technology have resulted in improved images and analytical methods to better describe, evaluate, and understand shale hydrocarbon reservoirs.
The purpose of this memoir is to provide a practical reference for geologists, geophysicists, engineers, and students to gain a better understanding of the various state-of-the-art techniques and applications of electron microscopy for shale hydrocarbon reservoir evaluation.
This book contains 13 highly illustrated peer-reviewed papers that describe modern techniques and recent case studies, and a catalog of nearly 250 described SEM images of known productive and potential shale hydrocarbon reservoirs in the United States.
This reference volume is intended for both specialists and nonspecialists and includes the first published catalog of described scanning electron microscopic (SEM) images of productive shale hydrocarbon reservoirs that is hoped will serve as a useful guide for SEM petrographic interpretation and reservoir analog studies.