The other shoe is finally dropping. Horizontal technology is now entering the world of conventional oil production with a vengeance.
Most do not know that half of all oil at least has been unrecoverable and a fairer figure would be two thirds. In so called tight fields that is even worse.
A large part of the problem was that a vertical hole created a drainage low to which the oil needed to travel too. Much of the oil needed to be driven by contained gas to free it from the containing material and it had to travel down hill for hundreds of feet. In a good field we could massage it other gasses and the like.
Now we can crawl along the bottom of the formation for a great distance and with recent work perforate every hundred meters or less. This is like having a vertical well every hundred meters or less. Maximum drainage is assured with this type of cost effective geometry. We also can fracture the rock from each completion. Since fractures only travel similar distances, the geometry allows the whole formation to be carefully fractured.
We will never recover ninety percent from a formation, but getting much more than fifty percent is beginning to look possible. And as this item points out famous tight formations such as the Bakken and the Cardium, suddenly become viable.
Although we are well on the way to exiting the oil energy protocol, the good news is that pricy oil is available through this technology sufficiently ample as to let us cushion the developing decline in conventional production.
December 18,2009
Cardium and Viking Oil Plays
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Pembina, with an estimated 7.8 billion barrels of original oil in place, is
Both the Bakken and the Cardium are “tight” or “unconventional” plays, where the oil is hosted in a rock, as opposed to a more porous, and usual sand formation.
They were well known but uneconomic zones until a few years ago, when advancements in horizontal drilling and fracing technologies allowed them to be exploited. The Bakken is ranked by most Canadian analysts as the most profitable oil play in the country now, with Cardium as #2.
They were well known but uneconomic zones until a few years ago, when advancements in horizontal drilling and fracing technologies allowed them to be exploited. The Bakken is ranked by most Canadian analysts as the most profitable oil play in the country now, with Cardium as #2.
With the Cardium in particular, there is very little geological risk. It has been drilled through thousands of times to get to the oil in the more porous, productive zone below it. The market loves these low risk plays that are very “repeatable” – each new well is likely to produce just as the one before it.
Thirdly, these new technologies are continually improving the economics in these formations. Four years later, companies are still increasing production from Bakken wells, and increasing the overall amount of oil recovered from the formations. The Cardium is a younger play, only a year old, and as management teams tweak the way they drill and frac these wells, it may one day get even closer to Bakken economics.
The Viking oil play in Southwest Saskatchewan stands at approximately 6 billion barrels, implying that the play is second only to the Cardium in OOIP among non-oil sands resources. Similar to the Cardium, the Viking is a legacy oil pool that has been developed since the 1950s with older technology, and that now stands to be rejuvenated by virtue of advancements in horizontal multi-stage fraccing techniques.
Mid-Continent shale may have as much as 500 billion barrels of oil. Bakken Shale oil production alone may reach 500,000 barrels per day in 2011. The Three Forks is rumored to contain just as much oil as the Bakken.
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