Scoping study of unconventional oil and gas potential, Yukon

Scoping study of unconventional oil and gas potential, Yukon by B.J.R. Hayes and H.B. Archibald, Petrel Robertson Consulting Ltd., prepared for Yukon Geological Survey, 2012, Yukon Geological Survey Miscellaneous Report 7, 2012

Shallow biogenic gas reservoirs have been considered by some as a distinct unconventional gas resource type (e.g. Shurr and Ridgley, 2002), but are now generally included with shale gas and tight gas resources.

Coalbed methane (CBM) is, as the name implies, natural gas hosted in seams or beds of coal. … Coal beds are generally self-sourcing reservoirs – they contain gas evolved either biogenically or thermogenically from organic material within the coals themselves.

As of December 31, 2006, there had been 10,723 CBM wells drilled in Alberta, mostly in the Lower Cretaceous Mannville Group and Upper Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Formation, in the Alberta Plains region of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. … Hudson’s Hope Gas Ltd. announced in 2009 the first commercial CBM production in British Columbia, tapping the Lower Cretaceous Gething Formation coal measures of the Hudson’s Hope area (Beavers, 2009). Commercial CBM production has not yet been achieved in Atlantic Canada.

Curtis (2002) defined shale reservoirs as: “fine-grained, clay- and organic carbon-rich rocks, [which] are both gas source and reservoir rock components of the petroleum system…Gas is of thermogenic or biogenic origin and stored as sorbed hydrocarbons, as free gas in fracture and intergranular porosity, and as gas dissolved in kerogen and bitumen.” Rokosh et al. (2009) pointed out the term “shale” is often used loosely, and that natural gas is hosted: “not only in shale, but also a wide spectrum of lithology and texture from mudstone to siltstone and finegrained sandstone, any of which may be of siliceous or carbonate composition.” [Emphasis added]

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