Because of the boom in unconventional resources in the past decade, many countries including China have revolutionized their exploitation and production from shale reservoirs. In this regard, China has identified over 50 billion barrels of shale oil resources and 10 billion barrels of oil-initially-in-place (OIIP) in the major conventional oil-producing basins. However, the production of unconventional shale oil through a variety of techniques makes up less than 1% of the total crude oil output. The is due to limited knowledge from these shale oil formations such as their geological setting, production dynamics, and petrophysical attributes.

It should be noted that Chinese scientists initially followed the knowledge and technical requirements from the development of US marine shale oil formations. However, it was later revealed that China's continental shale oil units are quite different. This means the knowledge that was derived from the marine shale oil formations cannot be directly applied in China. As a result, understanding and characterizing various properties of continental shale oil formations is of significant importance in China.

Based on the knowledge gap to successfully produce from continental shale formations in China, this Special Issue is dedicated to attracting high quality original research and reviews that are dedicated to continental shale oil characterization from chemical and physical perspectives, particularly in China and around the globe.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• The continental shale oil sweet spot classification and geological evaluation
• The geomechanical properties of the continental shale oil formations
• Mutiscale pore structures characterization
• Quantitative analysis of the distribution of natural fractures
• New methods and theories of quantifying permeability and porosity
• Fluid flow in continental shale oil formations via experiments and simulation
• Research and application of key technologies for shale oil logging
• Novel enhanced oil recovery technology
• Novel fracturing technologies
• Impact of the fracturing fluid on the continental shale oil formations