The Montney Formation is a stratigraphical unit of

Lower Triassic The Early Triassic is the first of three epochs of the Triassic Period of the geologic timescale. It spans the time between Ma and Ma (million years ago). Rocks from this epoch are collectively known as the Lower Triassic Series, which is a un ...

age Age or AGE may refer to: Time and its effects * Age, the amount of time someone or something has been alive or has existed ** East Asian age reckoning, an Asian system of marking age starting at 1 * Ageing or aging, the process of becoming older ...

in the

Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) underlies of Western Canada including southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. This vast sedimentary ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

and

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

. It takes the name from the hamlet of Montney and was first described in

Texaco Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company unt ...

's Buick Creek No. 7 well by J.H. Armitage in 1962. The well was drilled north of Fort St. John, immediately east of the Alaska Highway.

Lithology

The formation is composed of siltstone and dark grey shale, with

dolomitic Dolomite () is an anhydrous carbonate mineral composed of calcium magnesium carbonate, ideally The term is also used for a sedimentary carbonate rock composed mostly of the mineral dolomite. An alternative name sometimes used for the dolomiti ...

siltstone in the base and fine grained

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

towards the top. The facies is shaley in the north and west of the extent ( Fort St. John),

silty Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel when ...

in the center (

Dawson Creek Dawson Creek is a city in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. The municipality of had a population of 12,978 in 2016. Dawson Creek derives its name from the creek of the same name that runs through the community. The creek was named after ...

and Pouce Coupe areas) and becomes coarser ( sandy) in western Alberta ( Valleyview area).

Oil and gas production

The Montney Formation is a major

shale gas Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and some ...

and

tight oil Tight oil (also known as shale oil, shale-hosted oil or light tight oil, abbreviated LTO) is light crude oil contained in unconventional petroleum-bearing formations of low permeability, often shale or tight sandstone. Economic production from ...

resource. A comprehensive joint study on the potential of the Montney Formation was completed by the National Energy Board, British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission and the Alberta Energy Regulator in 2013. This study found that the potential resources contained within the formation were 449 trillion cubic feet of marketable natural gas, 14,521 million barrels of marketable

natural gas liquids Natural-gas condensate, also called natural gas liquids, is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields. Some gas species within the raw natur ...

(NGLs) and 1,125 million barrels of oil. This estimate makes it one of the largest known gas resources in the world and equivalent to 145 years of Canada's 2012 consumption.

Gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...

is produced from the Montney Formation in both

and

. Major operators include Seven Generations Energy Ltd., Progress Energy Canada Ltd. (a subsidiary of Malaysia's ( PETRONAS), Painted Pony Energy Ltd.,

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...

plc,

Encana Ovintiv Inc. is a hydrocarbon exploration and production company organized in Delaware and headquartered in Denver, United States. It was founded and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, under its previous name Encana. It was the largest energy c ...

Corporation,

Murphy Oil Murphy Oil Corporation is a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration headquartered in Houston, Texas. The company is ranked 625th on the Fortune 500 and 1860th on the Forbes Global 2000. As of December 31, 2020, the company had of estimate ...

Corporation,

ARC Resources ARC Resources Ltd. (ARC) is a Canadian energy company with operations focused in the Montney resource play in Alberta and northeast British Columbia. The company has been operating since 1996. ARC pays a quarterly dividend to shareholders and its co ...

Ltd., and Advantage Oil & Gas Ltd."Talisman Sells Montney to Petronas for $1.4 Billion" 8 Nov 2013 Bloomberg
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oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

is produced from the formation in

Northern Alberta Northern Alberta is a geographic region located in the Canadian province of Alberta. An informally defined cultural region, the boundaries of Northern Alberta are not fixed. Under some schemes, the region encompasses everything north of the cen ...

Horizontal drilling Directional drilling (or slant drilling) is the practice of drilling non-vertical bores. It can be broken down into four main groups: oilfield directional drilling, utility installation directional drilling, directional boring (horizontal dir ...

and extensive

fracturing Fracture is the separation of an object or material into two or more pieces under the action of stress. The fracture of a solid usually occurs due to the development of certain displacement discontinuity surfaces within the solid. If a displa ...

process is necessary to have the fluid flow through the low permeability siltstone.

Shale gas Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and some ...

extraction emerged in the late 2000s in the distal facies of the formation's western extent.

Hydraulic fracturing in Canada

Massive hydraulic fracturing has been widely used in

since the late 1970s. The method is currently used in development of the Cardium, Duvernay, Montney and

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

formations in

, Bakken formation in

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a province in western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dak ...

, Montney and

Horn River The Horn River is a river in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is a major tributary of the Mackenzie River. The river gives the name to the Horn River Formation, a shale deposit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The Horn River ...

formations in

Distribution

The Montney Formation reaches maximum thickness in the foothills of the northern Canadian Rockies at , and thins out towards the north up to the Fort Nelson area and towards the east to

Peace River The Peace River (french: links=no, rivière de la Paix) is a river in Canada that originates in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia and flows to the northeast through northern Alberta. The Peace River joins the Athabasca River in th ...

Relationship to other units

Montney Formation is

unconformably An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval ...

overlain by

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

beds such as the

Doig Formation The Doig Formation is a geologic formation of middle Triassic age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It takes the name from Doig River, a tributary of the Beatton River, and was first described in the Texaco N.F.A. Buick Creek No. 7 wel ...

or Fernie Group and unconformably underlain by the

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.9 Mya. It is the last ...

or Carboniferous strata such as the Belloy Formation.

References

{{Shale gas Shale formations Geologic formations of Alberta Stratigraphy of British Columbia Oil-bearing shales in Canada Natural gas fields in Canada Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin Early Triassic Triassic Alberta Triassic British Columbia Triassic System of North America