Assessment and Enrichment Regulation of Global Oil Shale Resources

Abstract

Based on CNPC major science and technology programs research and many commercial database such as IHS, Robertson and C&C, this research established technologically recoverable coefficient by oil shale, and evaluated the technical recoverable resource of the 31 global sedimentary basins by the volumetric method and analogy method. The results showed that the global oil shale geological resources is 8345×108t, and the technical recoverable resources is 2099×108t. The global technical recoverable resources are mainly distributed in North America, Russia, Europe and South America, especially in the United States, Russia, Belarus, and Brazil. The largest four potential oil shale formations are the Green River shale in Piceance Basin, the Kashpir shale in Ural-Volga Basin, the Mancos shale in Uinta Basin and the Bazhenov shale in West Siberian Basin. Foreland basin and craton basin are the favorable basin types for technical recoverable oil shale resources. Also the technical recoverable oil shale resources are rich in Jurassic, Cretaceous, Devonian, and Paleogene strata. The organic matter of oil shale are mainly developed in lacustrine facies sedimentary environment, and most of the TOC abundance are between 8% - 15%, main type is given priority to with II1 type, closely followed by type I. Finally, the oil shale resources enrichment region have four typical characteristics: 1) a relatively stable tectonic conditions; 2) relative small hydrodynamic but deep water depth, 3) the climate with sufficient supply of source, and 4) the appropriate water condition.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90332 © 2018 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Cape Town, South Africa, November 4-11, 2018