As conventional gas resources in Canada decline, more interest is being given to unconventional shale gas reservoirs. Natural gas also has the potential to overcome other petroleum sources, such as coal, heavy oil, and conventional oil, as the fuel of choice because it is a cleaner source of energy with lower carbon emissions. As the world slowly shifts toward cleaner energy sources, it becomes increasingly important to study unconventional shale gas reservoirs. Shallow biogenic shale gas reservoirs generate gas by microbial activity, implying that current production to the surface consists of ancient adsorbed gas as well as recent biogenerated gas. Approximately 20% of all of the methane generated is generally thought to be of microbial origin. Most shallow shale gas reservoirs are at temperatures of less than 80 °C, and given the supply of carbon, water, and minerals, they can be thought of as multi-kilometer-scale bioreactors. In this study, the reaction rate kinetics for methane production were determined from experimental data using produced water and core samples from a shallow shale gas reservoir. These data, together with Langmuir desorption data, were used to model a heterogeneous shale gas reservoir using reactive reservoir simulation. The results show that biogenic shale gas generation accounts for about 12% of the total gas produced during a period of 2678 days. This is a significant percentage of the total gas production, and therefore, there is great potential to enhance methanogenesis within these reservoirs, because there are a number of methods to enhance microbial activity.
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