Coalbed methane, coalbed gas, or coal seam gas (CSG) is a form of natural gas extracted from coal beds. In recent decades it has become an important source of energy in United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries.
The oil and gas industry is usually divided into three major sectors: upstream, midstream and downstream. The upstream sector includes searching for potential underground or underwater crude oil and natural gas fields, drilling exploratory wells, and subsequently operating the wells that recover and bring the crude oil or raw natural gas to the surface.
China National Coal Group Co., Ltd., known as China Coal Group, is a Chinese coal mining conglomerate that was supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council. It was the second largest state-owned coal mining enterprise in the mainland China, and the third largest in the world, just after Shenhua Group in 2008, according to a website quoting Xinhua News Agency. It is engaged in coal production and sales, coal chemicals, coal mining equipment manufacturing, coal mine design and related engineering services.
Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and some analysts expect that shale gas will greatly expand worldwide energy supply.
The Sacred Headwaters is a large subalpine drainage basin centred around Klappan Mountain of the Klappan Range in northern British Columbia. It is the source of three wild salmon rivers: the Skeena River, Nass River, and Stikine River. It is also referred to as the Klappan Valley, although the Klappan—a tributary of the Stikine River—is only one of the area's watersheds. Local Tahltan people call the area Klabona, which is loosely translated as "headwaters".
The Klappan Coalbed Methane Project is a gas project owned by Shell Canada that looks to develop the coalbed methane from an area in northern British Columbia, near the source of three rivers: the Skeena River, Nass River, and Stikine River, and also the namesake Klappan River. The area is known in environmental politics and native lore as the Sacred Headwaters or Kablona. The project is the source of controversy and is opposed by First Nations groups and non-governmental organizations. If developed, the project will include a network of gas wells connected by roads and pipelines, as well as a pipeline to deliver the gas to market.
Essar Energy plc is Mauritius-based Indian energy company with assets in the power and oil and gas businesses. Headquartered in Port Louis, Mauritius and subsidiary of Essar Group, the firm has interests in both the power generation and petroleum industries. In May 2014 the company was acquired by its majority shareholder, Essar Global Fund Limited.
Questerre Energy Corporation (QEC) is an international energy exploration company headquartered in Calgary, Canada, and listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Oslo Stock Exchange. It holds the largest acreage position in the Utica Shale in the Saint Lawrence Lowlands. Questerre also have operations in Saskatchewan and in the Montney Formation in Alberta.
The inclusion of unconventional shale gas with conventional gas reserves has caused a sharp increase in estimated recoverable natural gas in Canada. Until the 1990s success of hydraulic fracturing in the Barnett Shales of north Texas, shale gas was classed as "unconventional reserves" and was considered too expensive to recover. There are a number of prospective shale gas deposits in various stages of exploration and exploitation across the country, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.
Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas produced from shale, a type of sedimentary rock. Shale gas has become an increasingly important source of natural gas in the United States over the past decade, and interest has spread to potential gas shales in Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. One analyst expects shale gas to supply as much as half the natural gas production in North America by 2020.
Fracking in the United Kingdom started in the late 1970s with fracturing of the conventional oil and gas fields near the North Sea. It was used in about 200 British onshore oil and gas wells from the early 1980s. The technique attracted attention after licences use were awarded for onshore shale gas exploration in 2008. The topic received considerable public debate on environmental grounds, with a 2019 high court ruling ultimately banning the process. The two remaining high-volume fracturing wells were supposed to be plugged and decommissioned in 2022.
San Leon Energy plc is an independent oil and gas exploration company and is Europe's leading shale gas company by acreage. San Leon has built up a portfolio of assets located in Poland, Morocco, Western Sahara, Albania, Ireland, Spain and Italy. The company's portfolio across these geographies is made up of both conventional exploration and shale assets.
Fracking has become a contentious environmental and health issue with Tunisia and France banning the practice and a de facto moratorium in place in Quebec (Canada), and some of the states of the US.
Environmental impact of fracking in the United States has been an issue of public concern, and includes the contamination of ground and surface water, methane emissions, air pollution, migration of gases and fracking chemicals and radionuclides to the surface, the potential mishandling of solid waste, drill cuttings, increased seismicity and associated effects on human and ecosystem health. Research has determined that human health is affected. A number of instances with groundwater contamination have been documented due to well casing failures and illegal disposal practices, including confirmation of chemical, physical, and psychosocial hazards such as pregnancy and birth outcomes, migraine headaches, chronic rhinosinusitis, severe fatigue, asthma exacerbations, and psychological stress. While opponents of water safety regulation claim fracking has never caused any drinking water contamination, adherence to regulation and safety procedures is required to avoid further negative impacts.
There are many exemptions for fracking under United States federal law: the oil and gas industries are exempt or excluded from certain sections of a number of the major federal environmental laws. These laws range from protecting clean water and air, to preventing the release of toxic substances and chemicals into the environment: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund.
Shale gas in the United Kingdom has attracted increasing attention since 2007, when unconventional onshore shale gas production was proposed. The first shale gas well in England was drilled in 1875. As of 2013 a number of wells had been drilled, and favourable tax treatment had been offered to shale gas producers.
The Balcombe drilling protest occurred when test drilling and possible fracking for petroleum were proposed in 2012 near Balcombe, a village in West Sussex England. Local residents protested and anti-fracking environmentalists in the UK made it a focus of attention. The drill pad is located in a wooded area known as Lower Stumble Wood.
The 2017 production of coalbed methane in the United States was 0.98 trillion cubic feet (TCF), 3.6 percent of all US dry gas production that year. The 2017 production was down from the peak of 1.97 TCF in 2008. Most coalbed methane production came from the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico.
Great Eastern Energy Corporation Limited is a Coalbed methane production company, which is located in Asansol district of West Bengal. With two CBM blocks, one in Raniganj at West Bengal and the other one in Mannargudi at Tamil Nadu, it has played an important role in providing methane gas. The wells dug in the respective blocks are well connected with Gas Gathering Stations and gas is fed into its dedicated steel pipeline network to maintain the supply.
Unconventional reservoirs, or unconventional resources are accumulations where oil & gas phases are tightly bound to the rock fabric by strong capillary forces, requiring specialised measures for evaluation and extraction.
