UK shale gas: The story so far

作者：Selley Richard C^*

来源：Marine and Petroleum Geology, 2012, 31(1): 100-109.

DOI：10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2011.08.017

• Shale gas
• Oil shale
• Shale oil
• UK
• Gas seeps
• Fractures

The UK's first well to encounter shale gas was drilled into the Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay in 1875, but its significance was not realised at the time. 25 years ago research at Imperial College applied the US shale gas paradigm to evaluate the UK's shale gas potential. Shale sequences with potential for gas production were identified in Carboniferous strata in the Midlands, and in Jurassic strata, particularly in the Weald. Without encouragement from Her Majesty's Government no exploration resulted from this initial research. Publication of the results of the project was rejected by many UK journals. It was finally published in the USA in 1987. Subsequent evaluations of UK petroleum resources by the Department of Energy and its descendants published in 2001 and 2003 omitted any mention of shale gas resources. Recent timely re-evaluations of the UK's shale gas potential have been carried out by the British Geological Survey and the Department for Energy & Climate Change. In 2008 the 13th Round of Onshore Licensing resulted in the award of several blocks for shale gas exploration, though bids were often based on a quest for both shale gas and conventional prospects. Cuadrilla Resource's Preese Hall No. 1 well drilled in 2010 was the first well drilled to specifically test for UK shale gas. The same drilling and fracturing techniques that led to the shale gas renaissance in the USA are now being applied to extracting oil from organic-rich shales that are currently in the oil It is interesting to speculate that oil may be produced by such techniques from the thermally mature Jurassic shales in the Wessex and Weald basins in the southern UK.

• 出版日期2012-3