Argillaceous shales comprise a large proportion of rocks in most sedimentary basins. They serve as caprocks in the projects of petroleum industry. Maintaining borehole and caprock integrity is to prevent disasters such as borehole collapse and leakage through caprocks. Thermal-hydro-mechanical properties of argillaceous shales have decisive controls on the integrity analysis. As a kind of […]

Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage is the most commonly used in-situ thermal method for recovering bitumen from oil sands formations in western Canada. In this process, two parallel horizontal wells, about 5 m apart vertically, are drilled near the bottom of the formation. Before production, the bitumen between the two wells has to be heated, to become […]