The boom in tight oil and shale gas in the last two decades,
fueled by a combination of directional drilling and staged hydraulic fracturing,
has revolutionized the energy industry, revitalized reserves once thought
depleted, changed the global energy market and raised environmental
concerns.
In the new book, “The Fossil Fuel
Revolution: Shale Gas and Tight Oil,” authors Daniel Soeder and Scyller
Borglum, Ph.D., delve into these issues and describe the remarkable energy
resources now being recovered from shales and other tight formations that have
opened up substantial new energy reserves for the 21st Century.
The book includes the history of
shale gas development, the technology used to economically recover hydrocarbons
and descriptions of the 10 primary shale gas resources of the United States.
The book also addresses international shale resources, environmental concerns
and policy issues. Soeder is the director of the Energy
Resources Initiative at the South Dakota
School of Mines & Technology. Borglum co-authored the book while
completing her doctorate degree in geology and geological engineering at SD
Mines.
This book is intended as a
reference on shale gas and tight oil for industry members, engineers,
geoscientists and college students. It provides a cross-cutting view of shale
gas and tight oil in the context of geology, petroleum engineering and
production. It includes a comprehensive description of productive and
prospective shales, allowing readers to compare and contrast production from
different areas. The book also addresses environmental and policy issues and
compares alternative energy resources in terms of economics and sustainability.
About the Authors:
Daniel J. Soeder has been
the director of the Energy Resources Initiative at SD Mines since 2017,
bringing 25 years of experience as a research scientist for the federal
government with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Nevada and the
Mid-Atlantic region, and with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) at the National
Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia. Prior to joining the
USGS in 1991, Soeder spent a decade studying the geology of unconventional
natural gas resources at the Institute of Gas Technology (now GTI) in Chicago,
and collected and characterized drill cores on the Eastern Gas Shales Project
as a DOE contractor from 1979 to 1981. He has authored multiple reports and
scientific papers on shale properties and the impacts of shale gas development
on the environment, including a special paper published by the Geological
Society of America in 2017 chronicling the development of natural gas resources
in the Marcellus Shale. He holds a B.S. degree in geology from Cleveland State
University, and an M.S. degree in geology from Bowling Green State University
(Ohio).
Dr. Scyller J. Borglum is a
geomechanical engineer at RESPEC, a
consulting and lab testing company in Rapid City. She also serves as State
Representative for South Dakota House District 32. She is a candidate for the
US Senate. She completed her doctorate in geology and geological engineering in
2018 at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, working as an intern at
the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, West Virginia,
and as a research assistant for the Energy Resources Initiative on the SD
Mines’ campus. In addition to her Ph.D., Borglum holds an M.S. and B.S. in
petroleum engineering, along with a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s
degree in theology. Before starting her Ph.D. program, she worked as a
petroleum engineer in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota for Packer’s Plus Energy
Services and Marathon Oil Company and held a summer position with Anadarko
Petroleum Corp. in Colorado.