Shales perform both the cap rock, low permeability rock layer that restrain hydrocarbons in the reservoir, and petroleum source rock in conventional petroleum systems. More recently they have been exploited as unconventional reservoirs. Their mechanical properties are important in determining the structural stability of wells and in evaluating the fracability of unconventional reservoirs. In addition, they allow the connection between oil prospecting data and the geochemical characteristics of the source rock. In this thesis, the nanomechanical properties of Irati shale samples from the Paraná Basin were characterized by atomic force microscopy and nanoindentation together with scanning electron microscopy. Image processing procedures were developed to construct images of tribomechanical properties of minerals and organic matter present on the surface. The mineralogical identification performed by electron microscopes allowed to associate the contrast found in the images obtained with the atomic force microscope to the tribomechanical properties of minerals and organic matter. These shale constituents were also characterized by nanoindentation to allow the measurement of two mechanical properties by an independent method. Finally, a set of randomly distributed nanoindentations on the surface was performed on a sample from the same region, and the result was statistically analyzed to allow comparison with macroscopic properties.