DEVONIAN SHALE PRODUCTION AND POTENTIAL

DEVONIAN SHALES OF OHIO AND THEIR EASTERN AND SOUTHERN EQUIVALENTS

DOE/MC/08216-1331

LARGE SCALE FOAM FRACTURING IN THE DEVONIAN SHALE - A FIELD DEMONSTRATION IN WEST VIRGINIA

LITHOLOGIC DESCRIPTION OF CORED WELLS #20402 AND #20403 IN THE DEVONIAN SHALE IN LINCOLN COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

Lithologic Description of Cored Wells #11940 and #12041 in the Devonian Shale in the Cottageville, West Virginia Area

Shallow Seismic Investigations of Devonian Shale Gas Production; June 1982

The Tennessee Division of Geology under contract to the Morgantown Energy Technology Center of the U.S. Department of Energy has drilled eight NX core holes in eastern Tennessee. The coring program, under the supervision of R. C. Milici, was designed to retrieve continuous core sections for a detailed characterization study of the Chattanooga Shale. The Geophysical wire-line logging for the NX drill holes was performed by the U.S. Geological Survey.

A paper describing the results of two hydraulic fracturing events. From the paper: "The current natural gas supply problems in the United States arc encouraging research into new or underdeveloped gas sources. One such source is the Devonian Shale sequence of Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. These thick shale deposits contain large gas resources, but have not been fully exploited because of the severely restricted gas well flow rates. Shale wells must be artificially stimulated to improve gas deliverability to a commercial level, and research is underway to develop a stimulation method suited to the Devonian Shale. This report describes a performance comparison of two wells completed in the Shale near Youngstown, Ohio: one stimulated conventionally with hydraulic fracturing, the other with a nitrogen/water foam treatment. Both wells have comparable reservoir sections and received equivalently sized stimulation treatments. Drilling and fracture programs for both wells are discussed along with short-term gas production tests conducted to evaluate the fracture treatments. Early indications show that the foam fracturing method is better suited to the reservoir conditions found in the Devonian Shale, resulting in much faster fracturing fluid clean-up and higher initial gas production than the conventional water method."

A brief discussion of some gas production experiments, done to better plan for future drilling events. From the paper: "Numerous areas in both the western and eastern United States contain large reserves of gas trapped in very low permeable reservoirs. The Mesa Verde formation in the Piceance, Green River, and Uinta Basins of the Rocky Mountain region for example, contains reserves of trillions of cubic feet of gas. The Brown Shale of Upper Devonian Age in the eastern United States also holds tremendous reserves of natural gas. The Morgantown West Virginia Energy Research Center of the U.S. Energy Research and Development Agency formerly the U.S. Bureau of Mines, as nart of a long term earth fracture systems evaluation program, has concentrated on developing methods for more efficiently producing gas from these marginal reservoirs. As a result of these studies, ERDA and Columbia Gas Transmission Corporation cooperated on a program to drill a series of wells to test the deviated well concept in the economically marginal Upper Devonian gas reservoir."

Paper discussing the geology of the Devonian shales and the potential locations of gasses within it. From the paper: "The internal stratigraphy of almost any sedimentary resource – be it a coal bed, an evaporite, or an aging oil field programmed for secondary recovery - is a vital first step for evaluating its full resource potential. Because this is also true of the gas potential of the Upper Devonian black-shale sequence of the Appalachian basin, we have identified and named a useful marker bed, the Three Lick Bed, in the upper part of the Ohio Shale and its equivalents in eastern Kentucky and in nearby Ohio, West Virginia, and Tennessee. The Three Lick Bed consists of three greenish-gray shale beds separated by fissile, brownish-black shale. These distinctive greenish gray shale beds are easily recognized in outcrop in seven sections on the east flank of the Cincinnati arch from southern Ohio into Tennessee, have a distinctive signature on wire-line logs, and can be identified in well cuttings over much of eastern Kentucky and adjacent parts of Ohio and West Virginia. The Three Lick Bed correlates with the middle unit of the Gassaway Member of the Chattanooga Shale in Tennessee and with the lower part of the Camp Run Member of the New Albany Shale in Indiana."

Geologic and Engineering Analyses and Evaluation of Factors Affecting Widespread Development of Devonian DOE/MC/22140-2651