Fracking In Canada
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Fracking In Canada
Fracking in Canada was first used in Alberta in 1953 to extract hydrocarbons from the giant Pembina oil field, the biggest conventional oil field in Alberta, which would have produced very little oil without fracturing. Since then, over 170,000 oil and gas wells have been fractured in Western Canada. Fracking is a process that stimulates natural gas or oil in wellbores to flow more easily by subjecting hydrocarbon reservoirs to pressure through the injection of fluids or gas at depth causing the rock to fracture or to widen existing cracks. New hydrocarbon production areas have been opened as fracking stimulating techniques are coupled with more recent advances in horizontal drilling. Complex wells that are many hundreds or thousands of metres below ground are extended even further through drilling of horizontal or directional sections. Massive fracturing has been widely used in Alberta since the late 1970s to recover gas from low-permeability sandstones such as the Spirit R ...
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Shale Gas
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. Shale gas has become an increasingly important source of natural gas in the United States since the start of this century, and interest has spread to potential gas shales in the rest of the world. China is estimated to have the world's largest shale gas reserves. A 2013 review by the United Kingdom Department of Energy and Climate Change noted that most studies of the subject have estimated that life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shale gas are similar to those of conventional natural gas, and are much less than those from coal, usually about half the greenhouse gas emissions of coal; the noted exception was a 2011 study by Robert W. Howart ...
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Montney Formation
The Montney Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Lower Triassic age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in British Columbia and Alberta. It takes the name from the hamlet of Montney and was first described in Texaco's Buick Creek No. 7 well by J.H. Armitage in 1962. The well was drilled north of Fort St. John, immediately east of the Alaska Highway. Lithology The formation is composed of siltstone and dark grey shale, with dolomitic siltstone in the base and fine grained sandstone towards the top. The facies is shaley in the north and west of the extent ( Fort St. John), silty in the center (Dawson Creek and Pouce Coupe areas) and becomes coarser (sandy) in western Alberta ( Valleyview area). Oil and gas production The Montney Formation is a major shale gas and tight oil resource. A comprehensive joint study on the potential of the Montney Formation was completed by the National Energy Board, British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission and the Alberta Energy Regulator i ...
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Williston Basin
The Williston Basin is a large intracratonic sedimentary basin in eastern Montana, western North Dakota, South Dakota, southern Saskatchewan, and south-western Manitoba that is known for its rich deposits of petroleum and potash. The basin is a geologic structural basin but not a topographic depression; it is transected by the Missouri River. The oval-shaped depression extends approximately north-south and east-west. The Williston Basin lies above an ancient Precambrian geologic basement feature, the Trans-Hudson Orogenic Belt that developed in this area about 1.8-1.9 billion years ago, and that created a weak zone that later led to sagging to produce the basin. The Precambrian basement rocks in the center of the basin beneath the city of Williston, North Dakota lie about below the surface. Deposition of sediments began in the Williston area during Cambrian time, but subsidence and basin filling were most intense during the Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian Periods, whe ...
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Unconventional (oil & Gas) Reservoir
Unconventional (oil and gas) reservoirs, or unconventional resources (resource plays) are accumulations where oil and gas phases are tightly bound to the rock fabric by strong capillary forces, requiring specialized measures for evaluation and extraction. Conventional reservoir Oil and gas are generated naturally at depths of around 4 or 5 km below Earth’s surface. Being lighter than the water- saturated rocks below the water table, the oil and gas are driven by buoyancy up through aquifer pathways towards Earth's surface over time. Some of the oil and gas percolate all the way to the surface as natural seepages, either on land or on the sea floor. The rest remains trapped underground by geological barriers in a variety of trap geometries. In this way, underground pockets of oil and gas accumulate by displacing water in porous rock. If the pockets are permeable, they are referred to as ''conventional reservoirs''. Wells are drilled into these reservoirs to crea ...
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Natural Gas
Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium. Methane is a colorless and odorless gas, and, after carbon dioxide, is the second-greatest greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change. Because natural gas is odorless, a commercial odorizer, such as Methanethiol (mercaptan brand), that smells of hydrogen sulfide (rotten eggs) is added to the gas for the ready detection of gas leaks. Natural gas is a fossil fuel that is formed when layers of organic matter (primarily marine microorganisms) are thermally decomposed under oxygen-free conditions, subjected to intense heat and pressure underground over millions of years. The energy that the decayed organisms originally obtained from the sun via photosynthesis is stored as chemical energy within the molecules of methane and other ...
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Western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West, or Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a list of regions of Canada, Canadian region that includes the four western provinces and territories of Canada, provinces just north of the Canada–United States border namely (from west to east) British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The people of the region are often referred to as "Western Canadians" or "Westerners", and though diverse from province to province are largely seen as being collectively distinct from other Canadians along cultural, linguistic, socioeconomic, geographic and political lines. They account for approximately 32% of Canada's total population. The region is further subdivided geographically and culturally between British Columbia, which is mostly on the western side of the Canadian Rockies and often referred to as the "British Columbia Coast, west coast", and the "Prairie Provinces" (c ...
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Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin
The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) underlies of Western Canada including southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. This vast sedimentary basin consists of a massive wedge of sedimentary rock extending from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Canadian Shield in the east. This wedge is about thick under the Rocky Mountains, but thins to zero at its eastern margins. The WCSB contains one of the world's largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas and supplies much of the North American market, producing more than per day of gas in 2000. It also has huge reserves of coal. Of the provinces and territories within the WCSB, Alberta has most of the oil and gas reserves and almost all of the oil sands. Conventional oil The WCSB is considered a mature area for exploration of petroleum and recent development has tended toward natural gas and oil sands rather than conventio ...
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Quebec
Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast and a coastal border with the territory of Nunavut. In the south, it shares a border with the United States. Between 1534 and 1763, what is now Quebec was the List of French possessions and colonies, French colony of ''Canada (New France), Canada'' and was the most developed colony in New France. Following the Seven Years' War, ''Canada'' became a Territorial evolution of the British Empire#List of territories that were once a part of the British Empire, British colony, first as the Province of Quebec (1763–1791), Province of Quebec (1763–1791), then Lower Canada (1791–1841), and lastly part of the Province of Canada (1841–1867) as a result of the Lower Canada Rebellion. It was Canadian Confederation, ...
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Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlantic Canada, with an estimated population of over 1 million as of 2024; it is also the second-most densely populated province in Canada, and second-smallest province by area. The province comprises the Nova Scotia peninsula and Cape Breton Island, as well as 3,800 other coastal islands. The province is connected to the rest of Canada by the Isthmus of Chignecto, on which the province's land border with New Brunswick is located. Nova Scotia's Capital city, capital and largest municipality is Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, which is home to over 45% of the province's population as of the 2021 Canadian census, 2021 census. Halifax is the List of census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada, twelfth-largest census metropolitan area in ...
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Newfoundland And Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population of Newfoundland and Labrador was estimated to be 545,579. The island of Newfoundland (and its smaller neighbouring islands) is home to around 94 per cent of the province's population, with more than half residing in the Avalon Peninsula. Labrador has a land border with both the province of Quebec, as well as a short border with the territory of Nunavut on Killiniq Island. The French overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon lies about west of the Burin Peninsula. According to the 2016 census, 97.0% of residents reported English as their native language, making Newfoundland and Labrador Canada's most linguistically homogeneous province. Much of the population is descended from English and Irish settlers, with the majority ...
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New Brunswick
New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to the west. It is part of Eastern Canada and is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic Canada, Atlantic provinces. The province is about 83% forested and its northern half is occupied by the Appalachians. The province's climate is continental climate, continental with snowy winters and temperate summers. New Brunswick has a surface area of and 775,610 inhabitants (2021 census). Atypically for Canada, only about half of the population lives in urban areas - predominantly in Moncton, Saint John, New Brunswick, Saint John and Fredericton. In 1969, New Brunswick passed the New Brunswick Official Languages Act (1969), Official Languages Act which began recognizing French as an official language, along ...
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Tight Gas
Tight gas is commonly used to refer to natural gas produced from reservoir rocks with such low permeability that massive hydraulic fracturing is necessary to produce the well at economic rates. The gas is sealed in very impermeable and hard rocks, making their formation "tight". These impermeable reservoirs which produce dry natural gas are also called "Tight Sand". In reality the term "tight" refers to reservoirs where wells are unable to be commercially exploited at current economic conditions in the absence of artificial stimulation or changes in well geometry. It is economic criteria (gas price, opex, capex, royalties and fiscal regime) which define this status and in many cases, as gas/oil prices rise then, projects that have been previously shelved become viable; improvements in technology or changes in available infrastructure may also rehabilitate otherwise stranded gas. Tight gas reservoirs historically were generally defined as having less than 0.1 milli darcy (mD) matr ...
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