Abstract: Shale gas migration in the shale nanopores is of great importance to production forecast of gas reservoirs. This work investigates the migration of shale gas under the uni-axial strain condition when considering the coupling effect of shale deformation and gas flow by using the COMSOL software. Based on the classical Biot’s theory of poroelasticity to account for solid deformation and introducing the apparent permeability model to modify the traditional Darcy model, the influence of surface sorptive diffusion, the initial porosity and intrinsic permeability of shale on the apparent permeability and flow mechanisms is discussed. Numerical results show that surface sorptive diffusion in the shale has significant impact on the apparent permeability. Such effect becomes more distinct especially when the pressure of the shale gas reservoir falls down. Neglecting the surface sorptive diffusion will give lower apparent permeability. Moreover, both the apparent permeability and Knudsen number increase with the increase of the initial shale porosity while they decrease when increasing the initial intrinsic permeability of shale. Variations of Knudsen number, apparent permeability and intrinsic permeability depend on the competitive consequence of pore pressure, desorption, Knudsen diffusion and surface sorptive diffusion.