33 research outputs found
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MAJOR OIL PLAYS IN UTAH AND VICINITY
Utah oil fields have produced a total of 1.2 billion barrels (191 million m{sup 3}). However, the 15 million barrels (2.4 million m{sup 3}) of production in 2000 was the lowest level in over 40 years and continued the steady decline that began in the mid-1980s. The Utah Geological Survey believes this trend can be reversed by providing play portfolios for the major oil producing provinces (Paradox Basin, Uinta Basin, and thrust belt) in Utah and adjacent areas in Colorado and Wyoming. Oil plays are geographic areas with petroleum potential caused by favorable combinations of source rock, migration paths, reservoir rock characteristics, and other factors. The play portfolios will include: descriptions and maps of the major oil plays by reservoir; production and reservoir data; case-study field evaluations; summaries of the state-of-the-art drilling, completion, and secondary/tertiary techniques for each play; locations of major oil pipelines; descriptions of reservoir outcrop analogs; and identification and discussion of land use constraints. All play maps, reports, databases, and so forth, produced for the project will be published in interactive, menu-driven digital (web-based and compact disc) and hard-copy formats. This report covers research activities for the second quarter of the first project year (October 1 through December 31, 2002). This work included (1) gathering field and pipeline data to produce a digital oil and gas field and pipeline map, and (2) Uinta Basin well database compilation. The oil and gas field map will help to delineate the various oil plays to be described later in the project. The map will also identify CO{sub 2} resources, and will be useful in the planning and economic evaluation of best practices using CO{sub 2} to flood mature oil reservoirs. The play descriptions will be enhanced with the updated oil and gas pipeline map. It can be used to plan economic evaluation of exploration activities and field development, particularly if H{sub 2}S is produced or CO{sub 2} in needed for best practices. Well databases developed for the project will better define the limits of oil plays in the Uinta Basin and evaluate shows for potential new plays in the basin. Technology transfer activities consisted of a technical presentation to the Utah Stake Holder Board Members belonging to the Uinta Basin Oil and Gas Collaborative Group. The project home page was updated on the Utah Geological Survey Internet web site
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MAJOR OIL PLAYS IN UTAH AND VICINITY
Utah oil fields have produced a total of 1.2 billion barrels (191 million m{sup 3}). However, the 15 million barrels (2.4 million m{sup 3}) of production in 2000 was the lowest level in over 40 years and continued the steady decline that began in the mid-1980s. The Utah Geological Survey believes this trend can be reversed by providing play portfolios for the major oil producing provinces (Paradox Basin, Uinta Basin, and thrust belt) in Utah and adjacent areas in Colorado and Wyoming. Oil plays are geographic areas with petroleum potential caused by favorable combinations of source rock, migration paths, reservoir rock characteristics, and other factors. The play portfolios will include: descriptions and maps of the major oil plays by reservoir; production and reservoir data; case-study field evaluations; summaries of the state-of-the-art drilling, completion, and secondary/tertiary techniques for each play; locations of major oil pipelines; descriptions of reservoir outcrop analogs; and identification and discussion of land use constraints. All play maps, reports, databases, and so forth, produced for the project will be published in interactive, menu-driven digital (web-based and compact disc) and hard-copy formats. This report covers research activities for the first quarter of the first project year (July 1 through September 30, 2002). This work included producing general descriptions of Utah's major petroleum provinces, gathering field data, and analyzing best practices in the Utah Wyoming thrust belt. Major Utah oil reservoirs and/or source rocks are found in Devonian through Permian, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary rocks. Stratigraphic traps include carbonate buildups and fluvial-deltaic pinchouts, and structural traps include basement-involved and detached faulted anticlines. Best practices used in Utah's oil fields consist of waterflood, carbon-dioxide flood, gas-injection, and horizontal drilling programs. Nitrogen injection and horizontal drilling programs have been successfully employed to enhance oil production from the Jurassic Nugget Sandstone (the major thrust belt oil-producing reservoir) in Wyoming's Painter Reservoir and Ryckman Creek fields. At Painter Reservoir field a tertiary, miscible nitrogen-injection program is being conducted to raise the reservoir pressure to miscible conditions. Supplemented with water injection, the ultimate recovery will be 113 million bbls (18 million m{sup 3}) of oil (a 68 percent recovery factor over a 60-year period). The Nugget reservoir has significant heterogeneity due to both depositional facies and structural effects. These characteristics create ideal targets for horizontal wells and horizontal laterals drilled from existing vertical wells. Horizontal drilling programs were conducted in both Painter Reservoir and Ryckman Creek fields to encounter potential undrained compartments and increase the overall field recovery by 0.5 to 1.5 percent per horizontal wellbore. Technology transfer activities consisted of exhibiting a booth display of project materials at the Rocky Mountain Section meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a technical presentation to the Wyoming State Geological Survey, and two publications. A project home page was set up on the Utah Geological Survey Internet web site
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Increased Oil Production and Reserves Utilizing Secondary/Tertiary Recovery Techniques on Small Reservoirs in the Paradox Basin, Utah Progress Report
The Paradox basin of Utah, Colorado, and Arizona contains nearly 100 small oil fields producing from carbonate buildups or mounds within the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation. These fields typically have one to four wells with primary production ranging from 700,000 to 2,000,000 barrels of oil per field at a 15 to 20% recovery rate. At least 200 million barrels of oil is at risk of being unrecovered in these small fields because of inefficient recovery practices and undrained heterogeneous reservoirs. Five fields (Anasazi, mule, Blue Hogan, heron North, and Runway) within the Navajo Nation of southeastern utah are being evaluated for waterflood or carbon-dioxide-miscible flood projects based upon geological characterization and reservoir modeling. The results can be applied to other fields in the Paradox basin and the Rocky Mountain region, the Michigan and Illinois basins, and the Midcontinent. The reservoir engineering component of the work completed to date included analysis of production data and well tests, comprehensive laboratory programs, and preliminary mechanistic reservoir simulation studies. A comprehensive fluid property characterization program was completed. Mechanistic reservoir production performance simulation studies were also completed
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INCREASED OIL PRODUCTION AND RESERVES UTILIZING SECONDARY/TERTIARY RECOVERY TECHNIQUES ON SMALL RESERVOIRS IN THE PARADOX BASIN, UTAH
The Paradox Basin of Utah, Colorado, and Arizona contains nearly 100 small oil fields producing from shallow-shelf carbonate buildups or mounds within the Desert Creek zone of the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation. These fields typically have one to four wells with primary production ranging from 700,000 to 2,000,000 barrels (111,300-318,000 m{sup 3}) of oil per field at a 15 to 20 percent recovery rate. Five fields in southeastern Utah were evaluated for waterflood or carbon-dioxide (CO{sub 2})-miscible flood projects based upon geological characterization and reservoir modeling. Geological characterization on a local scale focused on reservoir heterogeneity, quality, and lateral continuity as well as possible compartmentalization within each of the five project fields. The Desert Creek zone includes three generalized facies belts: (1) open-marine, (2) shallow-shelf and shelf-margin, and (3) intra-shelf, salinity-restricted facies. These deposits have modern analogs near the coasts of the Bahamas, Florida, and Australia, respectively, and outcrop analogs along the San Juan River of southeastern Utah. The analogs display reservoir heterogeneity, flow barriers and baffles, and lithofacies geometry observed in the fields; thus, these properties were incorporated in the reservoir simulation models. Productive carbonate buildups consist of three types: (1) phylloid algal, (2) coralline algal, and (3) bryozoan. Phylloid-algal buildups have a mound-core interval and a supra-mound interval. Hydrocarbons are stratigraphically trapped in porous and permeable lithotypes within the mound-core intervals of the lower part of the buildups and the more heterogeneous supramound intervals. To adequately represent the observed spatial heterogeneities in reservoir properties, the phylloid-algal bafflestones of the mound-core interval and the dolomites of the overlying supra-mound interval were subdivided into ten architecturally distinct lithotypes, each of which exhibits a characteristic set of reservoir properties obtained from outcrop analogs, cores, and geophysical logs. The Anasazi and Runway fields were selected for geostatistical modeling and reservoir compositional simulations. Models and simulations incorporated variations in carbonate lithotypes, porosity, and permeability to accurately predict reservoir responses. History matches tied previous production and reservoir pressure histories so that future reservoir performances could be confidently predicted. The simulation studies showed that despite most of the production being from the mound-core intervals, there were no corresponding decreases in the oil in place in these intervals. This behavior indicates gravity drainage of oil from the supra-mound intervals into the lower mound-core intervals from which the producing wells' major share of production arises. The key to increasing ultimate recovery from these fields (and similar fields in the basin) is to design either waterflood or CO{sub 2}-miscible flood projects capable of forcing oil from high-storage-capacity but low-recovery supra-mound units into the high-recovery mound-core units. Simulation of Anasazi field shows that a CO{sub 2} flood is technically superior to a waterflood and economically feasible. For Anasazi field, an optimized CO{sub 2} flood is predicted to recover a total 4.21 million barrels (0.67 million m3) of oil representing in excess of 89 percent of the original oil in place. For Runway field, the best CO{sub 2} flood is predicted to recover a total of 2.4 million barrels (0.38 million m3) of oil representing 71 percent of the original oil in place. If the CO{sub 2} flood performed as predicted, it is a financially robust process for increasing the reserves in the many small fields in the Paradox Basin. The results can be applied to other fields in the Rocky Mountain region, the Michigan and Illinois Basins, and the Midcontinent
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Geological and Petrophysical Characterization of the Ferron Sandstone for 3-D Simulation of a Fluvial-Deltaic Reservoir Progress Report
The objective of the Ferron Sandstone project is to develop a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, quantitative characterization of a fluvial-deltaic reservoir to allow realistic inter-well and reservoir-scale models to be developed for improved oil-field development in similar reservoirs world-wide. Quantitative geological and petrophysical information on the Cretaceous Ferron Sandstone in east-central Utah was collected. Both new and existing data is being integrated into a three-dimensional model of spatial variations in porosity, storativity, and tensorial rock permeability at a scale appropriate for inter-well to regional-scale reservoir simulation. Simulation results could improve reservoir management through proper infill and extension drilling strategies, reduction of economic risks, increased recovery from existing oil fields, and more reliable reserve calculations. Transfer of the project results to the petroleum industry is an integral component of the project. This report covers research activities for fiscal year 1995-96, the third year of the project. Most work consisted of interpreting the large quantity of data collected over two field seasons. The project is divided into four tasks: (1) regional stratigraphic analysis, (2) case studies, (3) reservoirs models, and (4) field-scale evaluation of exploration strategies. The primary objective of the regional stratigraphic analysis is to provide a more detailed interpretation of the stratigraphy and gross reservoir characteristics of the Ferron Sandstone as exposed in outcrop. The primary objective of the case-studies work is to develop a detailed geological and petrophysical characterization, at well-sweep scale or smaller, of the primary reservoir lithofacies typically found in a fluvial-dominated deltaic reservoir
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HETEROGENEOUS SHALLOW-SHELF CARBONATE BUILDUPS IN THE PARADOX BASIN, UTAH AND COLORADO: TARGETS FOR INCREASED OIL PRODUCTION AND RESERVES USING HORIZONTAL DRILLING TECHNIQUES
The Paradox Basin of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico contains nearly 100 small oil fields producing from carbonate buildups within the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation. These fields typically have one to 10 wells with primary production ranging from 700,000 to 2,000,000 barrels (111,300-318,000 m{sup 3}) of oil per field and a 15 to 20 percent recovery rate. At least 200 million barrels (31.8 million m{sup 3}) of oil will not be recovered from these small fields because of inefficient recovery practices and undrained heterogeneous reservoirs. Several fields in southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado are being evaluated as candidates for horizontal drilling and enhanced oil recovery from existing, vertical, field wells based upon geological characterization and reservoir modeling case studies. Geological characterization on a local scale is focused on reservoir heterogeneity, quality, and lateral continuity, as well as possible reservoir compartmentalization, within these fields. This study utilizes representative cores, geophysical logs, and thin sections to characterize and grade each field's potential for drilling horizontal laterals from existing development wells. The results of these studies can be applied to similar fields elsewhere in the Paradox Basin and the Rocky Mountain region, the Michigan and Illinois Basins, and the Midcontinent region. This report covers research activities for the first half of the third project year (April 6 through October 5, 2002). This work included capillary pressure/mercury injection analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and pore casting on selected samples from Cherokee and Bug fields, Utah. The diagenetic fabrics and porosity types found at these fields are indicators of reservoir flow capacity, storage capacity, and potential for enhanced oil recovery via horizontal drilling. The reservoir quality of Cherokee and Bug fields has been affected by multiple generations of dissolution, anhydrite plugging, and various types of cementation which act as barriers or baffles to fluid flow. The most significant diagenetic characteristics are microporosity (Cherokee field) and micro-boxwork porosity (Bug field), as shown from porethroat radii histograms, and saturation profiles generated from the capillary pressure/mercury injection analysis, and identified by scanning electron microscopy and pore casting. These porosity types represent important sites for untapped hydrocarbons and primary targets for horizontal drilling. Technology transfer activities consisted of exhibiting a booth display of project materials at the Rocky Mountain Section meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a technical presentation, and publications. The project home page was updated for the Utah Geological Survey Internet web site
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Geological and Petrophysical Characterization of the Ferron Sandstone for 3-D Simulation of a Fluvial-Deltaic Reservoir Progress Report
The objective of the Ferron Sandstone project is to develop a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, quantitative characterization of a fluvial-deltaic reservoir to allow realistic interwell and reservoir-scale models to be developed for improved oil-field development in similar reservoirs world-wide. Quantitative geological and petrophysical information on the Cretaceous Ferron Sandstone in east-central Utah was collected. Both new and existing data is being integrated into a three-dimensional model of spatial variations in porosity, storativity, and tensorial rock permeability at a scale appropriate for inter-well to regional-scale reservoir simulation. Simulation results could improve reservoir management through proper infill and extension drilling strategies, reduction of economic risks, increased recovery from existing oil fields, and more reliable reserve calculations. Transfer of the project results to the petroleum industry is an integral component of the project. This report covers research activities for fiscal year 1994-95, the second year of the project. Most work consisted of developing field methods and collecting large quantities of existing and new data. We also continued to develop preliminary regional and case-study area interpretations. The project is divided into four tasks: (1) regional stratigraphic analysis, (2) case studies, (3) reservoirs models, and (4) field-scale evaluation of exploration strategies
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CARBON AND OXYGEN ISOTOPIC ANALYSIS: BUG, CHEROKEE, AND PATTERSON CANYON FIELDS, SAN JUAN COUNTY, UTAH
Over 400 million barrels (64 million m{sup 3}) of oil have been produced from the shallow-shelf carbonate reservoirs in the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation in the Paradox Basin, Utah and Colorado. With the exception of the giant Greater Aneth field, the other 100 plus oil fields in the basin typically contain 2 to 10 million barrels (0.3-1.6 million m{sup 3}) of original oil in place. Most of these fields are characterized by high initial production rates followed by a very short productive life (primary), and hence premature abandonment. Only 15 to 25 percent of the original oil in place is recoverable during primary production from conventional vertical wells. An extensive and successful horizontal drilling program has been conducted in the giant Greater Aneth field. However, to date, only two horizontal wells have been drilled in small Ismay and Desert Creek fields. The results from these wells were disappointing due to poor understanding of the carbonate facies and diagenetic fabrics that create reservoir heterogeneity. These small fields, and similar fields in the basin, are at high risk of premature abandonment. At least 200 million barrels (31.8 million m{sup 3}) of oil will be left behind in these small fields because current development practices leave compartments of the heterogeneous reservoirs undrained. Through proper geological evaluation of the reservoirs, production may be increased by 20 to 50 percent through the drilling of low-cost single or multilateral horizontal legs from existing vertical development wells. In addition, horizontal drilling from existing wells minimizes surface disturbances and costs for field development, particularly in the environmentally sensitive areas of southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado
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Increased Oil Production and Reserves Utilizing Secondary/Tertiary Recovery Techniques on Small Reservoirs in the Paradox Basin, Utah Progress Report
The Paradox basin of Utah, Colorado, and Arizona contains nearly 100 small oil fields producing from carbonate buildups or mounds within the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation. These fields typically have one to four wells with primary production ranging from 700,000 to 2,000,000 barrels (111,300-318,000 m{sup 3}) of oil per field at a 15 to 20 percent recovery rate. At least 200 million barrels (31,800,000 m{sup 3}) of oil are at risk of being unrecovered in these small fields because of inefficient recovery practices and undrained heterogeneous reservoirs. Five fields (Anasazi, Mule, Blue Hogan, Heron North, and Runway) within the Navajo Nation of southeastern Utah are being evaluated for waterflood or carbon-dioxide (CO{sub 2})-miscible flood projects based upon geological characterization and reservoir modeling. The results can be applied to other fields in the Paradox basin and the Rocky Mountain region, the Michigan and Illinois basins, and the Midcontinent. Geological characterization on a local scale focused on reservoir heterogeneity, quality, and lateral continuity as well as possible compartmentalization within each of the five project fields. This study utilized representative core and modern geophysical logs to characterize and grade each of the five fields for suitability of enhanced recovery projects. The typical vertical sequence or cycle of lithofacies from each field, as determined from conventional core, was tied to its corresponding log response. The diagenetic fabrics and porosity types found in the various hydrocarbon-bearing rocks of each field can be an indicator of reservoir flow capacity, storage capacity, and potential for water- and/or CO{sub 2}-flooding. Diagenetic histories of the various Desert Creek reservoirs were determined from 50 representative samples selected from the conventional cores of each field. Thin sections were also made of each sample for petrographic description
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Increased Oil Production and Reserves Utilizing Secondary/Tertiary Recovery Techniques on Small Reservoirs in the Paradox Basin, Utah Progress Report
The Paradox basin of Utah, Colorado, and Arizona contains nearly 100 small oil fields producing from carbonate buildups or mounds within the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation. These fields typically have one to four wells with primary production ranging from 700,000 to 2,000,000 barrels of oil per field at a 15 to 20% recovery rate. At least 200 million barrels of oil is at risk of being unrecovered in these small fields because of inefficient recovery practices and undrained heterogeneous reservoirs. Five fields (Anasazi, Mule, Blue Hogan, Heron North, and Runway) within the Navajo Nation of southeastern Utah are being evaluated for waterflood or carbon-dioxide-miscible flood projects based upon geological characterization and reservoir modeling. The results can be applied to other fields in the Paradox basin and the Rocky Mountain region, the Michigan and Illinois basins, and the Midcontinent. The Anasazi field was selected for the initial geostatistical modeling and reservoir simulation. A compositional simulation approach is being used to model primary depletion, waterflood, and CO{sub 2}-flood processes. During this second year of the project, team members performed the following reservoir-engineering analysis of Anasazi field: (1) relative permeability measurements of the supra-mound and mound-core intervals, (2) completion of geologic model development of the Anasazi reservoir units for use in reservoir simulation studies including completion of a series of one-dimensional, carbon dioxide-displacement simulations to analyze the carbon dioxide-displacement mechanism that could operate in the Paradox basin system of reservoirs, and (3) completion of the first phase of the full-field, three-dimensional Anasazi reservoir simulation model, and the start of the history matching and reservoir performance prediction phase of the simulation study