Laboratory Investigation on the Effects of Acid and Surfactant on Malaysian Coal for Coal Bed Methane (CBM) Study

Since the discovery of oil in Sarawak in 1910, Malaysian energy sector had been dependent on this resource. However the country’s oil consumption has been steadily growing since then causes the long gone of easy-oil. So the government had to invest in enhancing recovery from existing oil or gas fields in order to meet energy need or find other alternative energy sources to replace the impending country’s petroleum exhaustion, such as Coal Bed Methane (CBM). CBM is an unconventional reservoir thus it is hard to extract gas from them. CBM Production usually involves dewatering the formation to lower reservoir pressure. By lowering the reservoir pressure, it will allow the formation of free gas and raises the gas permeability thus allows the migration of gas into the wellbore. Hydraulic fracturing is the common method to stimulate CBM reservoir to produce methane gas.