Society of Petroleum Geophysicists (SPG)-India organized a technical webinar on 20.01.2022 at Dehradun on the topic on Shale Gas and Oil Resource Potential of India and Comparison with Major US Plays, The webinar was delivered by Shri Arun Kumar, Ex-Executive Director of ONGC. Around 170 professionals from ONGC, Academic / Research institutes and various E&P companies have participated enthusiastically.

Session started with welcome address and brief introduction about the objective of the webinar by President of SPG India, Shri S K Sharma,ED-CGS. While introducing the topic President, SPG said that the shale oil & gas exploration is a game changer in the HC production history of The USA, which turned from net importer to self-reliant and tending towards net exporter. President, SPG-India emphasized that such interactive sessions are noble initiatives which give an opportunity for knowledge sharing and interaction with young and experienced geoscientists.

Shri Arun Kumar delivered the talk on Shale Gas and Oil Resource Potential' of India and Comparison with Major US Plays. The talk highlighted the fact that in India, due to the huge gap between energy supply and demand, the conventional oil resources are not enough to fulfill the energy requirements. Due to high oil price fluctuation, the need for unconventional hydrocarbon resources is increasingly high for energy security.

Among the unconventional resources that are trapped in tight reservoirs and sedimentary rocks, shale gas is one of them. For the exploitation of conventional gas, vertical drilling is the only process where natural gases rises from the reservoirs naturally due to the pressure difference. But in case of shale gas, vertical drilling collects only a marginal quantity of gas, which deeply hampers the profitability of shale gas exploitation. Various techniques like horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing have made the shale gas exploration and exploitation extremely economical which has been successfully implemented in developed countries like USA, Canada and China. Currently for enhanced shale gas recovery, methods like CO2 Injection and Enhanced CH4 Recovery and High Temperature Supercritical CO2 Flooding, are under active research.

Shri Arun Kumar talks about the India high potential reserves of shale gas in Cambay basin, Assam-Arakon basin, Krishna-Godavari basin, Cauvery basin and Damodar valley sub-basin. Shale gas tends to cost more than gas from conventional wells due to extensive use of horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing. Due to such parameters, India has not been able to commercialize the production.

Currently India is facing challenges for the production of shale gas due to limited geographical area and requirement of huge water reservoirs as compared to other shale gas producing countries. Apart from that, priority attention needs to be given to the technological development, man power, infrastructure, policy and regulatory framework. The talk reviews the current scenario and potential of shale gas in Indiaand also focuses on the upcoming challenges and their proposed solutions for the production of shale gas in India, which is going to be a huge source of unconventional energy in upcoming decades.

The participative interaction with various questions related to shale gas prospective by the participants made the talk fruitful and interesting. The talk was well appreciated by all the participants for its contents and thoughtful discussion provided by the presenter. The entire webinar session was coordinated by Shri Shashwat Shubhra, Executive Member, SPG-India.