Unconventional oil and gas resources include shale gas, tight gas, coalbed methane (CBM), shale oil, tight oil, and natural gas hydrates. There is increasing growth in industry worldwide, and this is still significantly reliant on the supply of energy derived from these unconventional energy resources.

Advances in unconventional oil and gas production and the possible adoption of a more effective international climate policy may impact on supply–demand balances in the petroleum sector, causing shifts in financial flows and capital accumulation. Such changes may in turn lead to shifts in the power balance between oil and gas exporting and importing countries. Compared to conventional oil and gas reservoirs, special mechanisms and experiments are required to best evaluate these unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.

This Special Issue focuses on the sustainable development of unconventional oil and gas resources, recent advances, and the challenges they are facing for sustainability. We aim to bring together researchers in the aforementioned fields to highlight the current development of new techniques, to exchange the latest understanding of the underlying mechanisms, to present advanced algorithms for modeling, and to facilitate collaboration between researchers in different fields. We welcome the submission of both original research and review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Multi-scale simulations of fluid flow in shale rocks
• Estimation and evaluation of fracture networks
• Adsorption and desorption in shale and CBM
• Natural gas hydrate phase equilibrium
• New advances in natural gas hydrate development
• Heavy oil/coal in-situ gasification
• CO2-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in unconventional oil and gas reservoirs
• CO2 storage in abundant reservoirs