New Technology

Pumped fluid is enough to crack shale as much as 3,000 feet in each direction from the wellbore. A 2500' horizontal well with 10 staged fractures contacts over 400 times the amount of reservoir than a conventional vertical well through the same formation.

Technology-driven, unconventional resource plays—particularly projects in search of gas or oil production from fractured shales—are sprouting up across North America and around the world.

Unlike conventional exploration where explorers search for oil or gas that has migrated into structural or stratigraphic traps, modern drilling capabilities and hydraulic fracturing technologies have made it possible to produce oil and gas directly from the "source" where oil and gas is actually formed. Until recent years, poor permeability (the ability for fluids to move through rock) has limited the economic significance of these source rocks. But advances in technology, particularly hydraulic fracturing techniques, has unlocked the potential of these unconventional reservoirs.

Hydraulic fracturing opens existing fractures and creates new fractures within the source rocks. This artificial stimulation generates flow pathways for the oil or gas that was otherwise locked inside the formation. Specially engineered fluids are pumped into the shale until the formation is actually fractured apart by the high pressure, proppants, such as grains of sand of a particular size are then pumped into the open fractures before the pressurized fluid is allowed to return to surface. The clean sand grains keep the newly created fracture open allowing the oil and gas to flow into the wellbore.