Shale reservoirs have become an important part of North American oil and gas supply and their development has begun a new era of oil and gas production worldwide. Advances in well drilling and completion technologies supported the rapid development of shale resources which contributed to the almost overwhelming success of U.S. shale in recent years. Globally, Argentina’s Neuquén Basin and China’s Sichuan Basin are the two front-runners to emulate the successes of the United States, with Poland, Algeria, Australia, Colombia, Russia, and Mexico still in earlier phases of exploration and evaluation, while Saudi Arabia also has plans for domestic shale...
