The West Virginia Geographic Information Systems Technical Center (WVGISTC) and West Virginia University (WVU) collaborated with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to compile digital GIS geometry and attribute data of major natural basins that are targets of gas and liquid hydrocarbon unconventional resources worldwide. Dataset consists of GIS data stored in vector, geodatabase format (ESRI, ArcGIS 10.1) and represents shale basins and plays in which unconventional production is occurring or has potential of occurring. Unconventional production is understood in this study to be a method for oil and gas exploitation in which horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are employed to stimulate shale formations with relatively low permeability. The dataset consists of 228 basins and 339 plays. The maximum geographic extent of the dataset is at a scale of 1:100,000,000.