Gas Shale of the Horn River Basin - Discovery, Potential, & Future
Edited by: Dale A. Leckie & Jim E. Barclay
The Horn River Basin in northestern British Columbia covers an area of approximately 1.31 million hectares and has an estimated natural gas resource in shale of 500 Tcf (Dawson, 2010). As the gas industry works to cost-effectively ramp up its activity, common efforts include maximizing the number of wells per pad, maximizing the lateral length per well, increasing the average number of fracs per well and reducing the volume of water per frac. To do this, a more sophisticated understanding of the reservoir is critical - how were the shales deposited; what was the depositional setting and sequence stratigraphic framework of the shale; what is the compositional framework of the shale; how were the shales subsequently genetically modified by burial and tectonics; what is the vertical and lateral variability of rock mechanical properties that resulted; how can the industry utilize seismic and microseismic to assess the rock mechanical properties; what are the developing technologies being pursued to find, frac and produce the natural gas?
With these questions in mind, a forum was hosted as part of the 2011 CSPG, CSEG, CWLS 2011 "Recovery" Annual Conference in Calgary. The forum covered most aspects of the basin that fell under the temes of:
1.
Discovery History, Potential & Future
2. Seismic, Microseismic and Rock Properties
3. Rock Properties and Seismic to Production
4. Geology: Rock & Pore Fabrics, Sequence Stratigraphy and Porosity Development
5. Innovation and Analogs
The summary papers are brought together here in this volume to capture the essence of the Horn River Basin shale gas play British Columbia early in its exploration and development history. The papers were organized according to the above listed themes.
Soft Cover, 153 pages, full colour, ISBN 978-0-9869425-0-1