Prospects of Hydraulic Fracturing For Recovery of Niger Delta Shale Formation | |
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( Volume 5 Issue 8,August 2019 ) OPEN ACCESS | |
Author(s): | |
Udechukwu Mathew C., Ekwueme Stanley T., Ubanozie Obibuike J., Okoro, Chijioke I. | |
Abstract: | |
There is now a global interest in unconventional petroleum exploitation. This of course is to meet up with the demand for energy by the growing world population. Conventional petroleum reserves although cheaper to exploit and produce are no longer sufficient to meet up with this demands. Newer pools of conventional reserves are seldom discovered and some petroleum analysts are beginning to say that the age of ‘cheap’ oil has passed. Unconventional petroleum reserves which includes shale gas, shale oil, tar sands, oil sands, heavy oils and bitumens etc. hold great potentials for exploitation. Nigeria needs to diversify in the energy sector. This diversification entails moving beyond conventional petroleum production. Since the Nigerian economy enormously depend on crude oil, conventional reserves may not be sufficient to meet up with growing demands and national needs. For this reason and more the Nigeria government must veer to exploitation the vast unconventional reserves in the country. Virtually all of the unconventional petroleum exist in Nigeria which include, heavy oils, bitumen, tar sands, shale oil/gas, tight gas etc. among these shale gas has received rapid global attention since the United States began the massive development of its shale. Since then other countries have followed suit leaving Nigeria behind. This paper evaluates the method to develop and exploit shale reservoirs using hydraulic fracturing methods. The various approaches, prospects and limitation of the hydraulic fracturing technology is discussed and analyzed. The results when a viscous oil reservoir was produced shows that more oil is recovered from hydraulically fractured reservoirs than reservoirs flowing without hydraulic fracture. |
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