Luis Zagaglia, Director of DIAVAZ Exploration and Production, participated in the panel “Northern Veracruz Basins, potential for development” at the AMEXHI National Petroleum Convention, where he highlighted the importance of strengthening materials and services in order to detonate the activity of unconventional projects in these areas.
Unconventional oil and gas fields have gained importance in recent decades due to the depletion of conventional reserves and the development and evolution of technologies that make their exploitation viable. Countries such as the United States, Canada and Argentina have led their development, transforming the global energy landscape. In the last 20 years, these countries have gone from being importers to exporters, and in the case of the United States, it is now one of the world’s leading producers of oil and gas.
Shale oil and gas reservoirs are technically defined as a petroleum system of organically rich clayey rocks (shale), with very low permeability, which act as generators, storers, traps and seals, so they are deposits of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) found in geological formations of low porosity and permeability, which makes their extraction by traditional techniques difficult. Unlike conventional reservoirs, where hydrocarbons flow naturally into the wells due to the high permeability of the rocks, unconventional reservoirs require advanced methods, such as multiple hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling, to generate permeability and thus release and extract the resources.
In Mexico there are huge prospective resources of unconventional reservoirs and one of the basins with the largest resources of this type is the Tampico-Misantla Basin, located mostly in the State of Veracruz. It is estimated that the production of this basin could reach 2 million BPCE/day (barrels of crude oil equivalent per day) [A. Guzmán 2018].
The Miquetla field is located in a strategic area of high potential (sweet spot) of an unconventional reservoir in the Tampico-Misantla Basin with large prospective resources. To begin development, an exploratory well must first be drilled to confirm that the characteristics of the rock meet the requirements to begin intensive development of this type of reservoir.
The exploitation of unconventional oil and gas in Mexico, particularly in the Tampico-Misantla Basin, would place Mexico once again among the world’s leading producers of oil and gas; it would also contribute strategically to achieving energy security in our country.
