Tuscaloosa_Marine_Shale

Tuscaloosa Marine Shale

Tuscaloosa Marine Shale

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The Tuscaloosa Marine Shale is a 90-million-year-old Late Cretaceous sedimentary rock formation across the Gulf Coast region of the United States.[1]

Geological map including the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale

It is similar in composition and geological age to the Eagle Ford Shale formation in southern Texas.[2]

The thickness of the formation varies from 500–800 feet,[3] and is located at a depth of 11,000-15,000 feet.

Petroleum

The formation is an unconventional oil reservoir, meaning that a majority of the petroleum hydrocarbons (crude oil and natural gas) originating in the source rock formations have not migrated out of the source rock, requiring advanced horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) technologies to reach economic viability for extraction. The potential reserve is currently estimated at 7 billion barrels of oil.[4]

  1. [1]
    Renken, Robert A.; (U.S.), Geological Survey (1996). Hydrogeology of the southeastern coastal plain aquifer system in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. U.S. G.P.O. pp. 2–. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  2. [2]
    Durham, L. S. (2011a) Similar in age and lithology to Eagle Ford Tuscaloosa Another Shale Playground. AAPG Explorer, August 2011.
  3. [3]
    Breyer, John (2012-08-20). Shale Reservoirs: Giant Resources for the 21st Century, AAPG Memoir 97. AAPG. pp. 108–. ISBN 9780891813798. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  4. [4]
    Chacko J. J., B. L. Jones, J. E. Moncrief, R. Bourgeois, and B. J. Harder (1997) An Unproven Unconventional Seven Billion Barrel Oil Resource - the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale. Archived 2012-09-16 at the Wayback Machine LSU Basin Research Institute Bulletin. vol. 7, pp. 1-22.
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