From shale gas to shale oil to oil shale

摘要

Extracting natural gas from fractured shale source rock has now become conventional. The next frontier appears to be oil from shale, first from mobile saturations of mature oil, and in due time, from immature kerogen embedded in shale rock. The transition from shale gas to shale oil is driven by economics. As there is now more than a triple price advantage in favor of producing oil, some of the shale gas operators are shifting their exploration and production operations to the oil windows of the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Barnett Shale plays. Since the technology of drilling long laterals and multistage fracturing is suitable for oil as well as natural gas, the transition is relatively easy to accomplish.