College of Geo-exploration Science and Technology��Jilin University��Changchun 130026��China

This paper studies a new method for calculating the gas content of shale gas reservoirs�� Although there are a lot of researches in this area��such as statistical methods��saturation model methods and so on��it is still difficult to ensure the accuracy and determine the related parameters�� In this paper��we use Support Vector Ma- chine (SVM) to calculate the gas content of shale gas in X Basin in southern China�� The total gas content is divid- ed into two parts: absorbed gas and free gas�� The absorbed gas is calculated by the SVM method and compared with the core data; the free gas is calculated by conventional method�� The total gas content is obtained by adding the two parts�� This method can compensate for the lack of the two former methods and calculate gas content more accurately in the shale gas reservoirs��