Table of Contents

Characteristics of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources. The Unconventional Basins and Plays—North America, the Rest of the World, and Emerging Basins. Unconventional Resources Workflow—Exploitation and Development. Seismic Reservoir Characterization Applications for Unconventional Resources. Pilot Projects in Unconventional Resources Development. Formation Evaluation and Reservoir Characterization of Source Rock Reservoirs. Role of Geomechanical Engineering in Unconventional Resources Developments. Laboratory Tests and Considerations to Complement the Overall Reservoir Understanding. Reservoir Engineering Aspects of Unconventional Oil and Gas. The Art of Data Mining and Its Impact on Unconventional Reservoir Development. Unconventional Reserves and Resources Accounting and Booking. Production Evaluation and Forecasting. Drilling Systems for Unconventionals. Multistage Completion Systems for Unconventionals. Stimulation of Unconventional Reservoirs. Flow Assurance. Artificial Lift Technologies. Monitoring Technologies—Microseismic, Fiber Optic, and Tracers. Rejuvenating Unconventional Resources. Environmental Issues in Unconventional Oil and Gas Resource Development. Case Studies, Accessing JewelSuite™ Software and Data. New Considerations and Future Trends in Reservoir Technologies for Unconventional Resources Development.

About the Author

Usman Ahmed is CTO of unconventional oil and gas resources technology and executive technical advisor to WellDog, and more recently, vice president and chief reservoir engineer at Baker Hughes. He previously worked for Schlumberger, TerraTek, and his own reservoir and production engineering consulting firm, Energy Resources International. He has two patents and more than three decades of petroleum engineering experience. He is a Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) distinguished member, a recognized technical and professional industry leader, and the author and coauthor of more than 100 industry papers and textbooks. He was an SPE distinguished speaker in 2004-2005 and 2013-2014, and has been invited to numerous events as a keynote speaker and panelist. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University.

D. Nathan Meehan serves as senior executive advisor to Baker Hughes. He was previously president of CMG Petroleum Consulting, vice president of engineering for Occidental Oil and Gas, and general manager of exploration and production services for Union Pacific Resources. He was recently elected the 2016 president of the Society of Petroleum (SPE) Engineers. He is an SPE distinguished member with more than 38 years of experience in reservoir engineering, reserve estimation, hydraulic fracturing, and horizontal wells. He holds a B.Sc. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, M.Sc. in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma, and Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from Stanford University. Widely published and highly decorated, Dr. Meehan is a licensed professional engineer in four states.

Reviews

"This cornerstone-edited volume sets a benchmark for understanding the complexity of unconventional oil and gas resources. The breath of the topics covered and level within each topic have set a high bar for any future book in this space. If you are in this business, you need to have this book. If you are considering this business, you could stumble without this book. It should be required reading at any university with programs in petroleum science. For those that don’t know the two editors, Usman Ahmed and Dr. Nathan Meehan, we are getting a volume that is scrutinized by two top-class industry scientists with vast technology insight who know the topics covered. In my judgment, if you could only have one book on this topic, this is it."
—Dr. Raymond Levey, Director, Energy and Geoscience Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA"The authors should be commended for carefully and painstakingly assembling this comprehensive collection of background data, methods, and workflows current to the industry with insight into potential areas of ongoing research and investigations (e.g., emerging resource areas, formation evaluation, data analytics, etc.). For the practitioner, this text serves as a valuable reference tool and guide. For the researcher, this text provides insight into current methods and workflows, and aids further investigations into emerging areas of unconventional resources. Finally, this text is an invaluable resource to accompany advanced undergraduate and postgraduate unconventional resources coursework and lectures. Heretofore, a comprehensive unconventional resources text such as this has been unavailable."
—Dr. Raymond Johnson, Jr., Senior Lecturer, University of Queensland, and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Adelaide, Australia

"This cornerstone-edited volume sets a benchmark for understanding the complexity of unconventional oil and gas resources. The breath of the topics covered and level within each topic have set a high bar for any future book in this space. If you are in this business, you need to have this book. If you are considering this business, you could stumble without this book. It should be required reading at any university with programs in petroleum science. For those that don’t know the two editors, Usman Ahmed and Dr. Nathan Meehan, we are getting a volume that is scrutinized by two top-class industry scientists with vast technology insight who know the topics covered. In my judgment, if you could only have one book on this topic, this is it."
—Dr. Raymond Levey, Director, Energy and Geoscience Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA"The authors should be commended for carefully and painstakingly assembling this comprehensive collection of background data, methods, and workflows current to the industry with insight into potential areas of ongoing research and investigations (e.g., emerging resource areas, formation evaluation, data analytics, etc.). For the practitioner, this text serves as a valuable reference tool and guide. For the researcher, this text provides insight into current methods and workflows, and aids further investigations into emerging areas of unconventional resources. Finally, this text is an invaluable resource to accompany advanced undergraduate and postgraduate unconventional resources coursework and lectures. Heretofore, a comprehensive unconventional resources text such as this has been unavailable."
—Dr. Raymond Johnson, Jr., Senior Lecturer, University of Queensland, and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Adelaide, AustraliaThe authors of this book have provided a comprehensive understanding of the latest advances in the exploitation and development of unconventional resources with emphasis on the exploitation and development process, from data mining and accounting to drilling, completion, stimulation, production, and environmental issues. The viewpoints of internationally respected experts and researchers from leading E&P companies and academic institutions are offered, as are potential technologies for unconventional resources development. Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources: Exploitation and Development will be useful to geologists, geophysicists, petrophysicists, geomechanic specialists, and drilling, completion, stimulation, production, and reservoir engineers in the environmentally safe exploitation and development of unconventional resources like shale.
—Oil and Gas International, July 2016