Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) oil wells are heating up - in Mississippi. Just north of West Feliciana Parish lies Wilkenson County. There in resides a new productive well drilled by Goodrich (no, not the tire company). Goodrich has been reporting their production figures in "barrels of oil equivalent."
They have also added a disclaimer behind that figure that says 93% oil. That means there are other minerals being produced such as natural gas, and natural gas fluids. Some folks are critical of that BOE - barrels of oil equivalent, in that it kind of hides the real oil quantity. But it seems to be legitimate number. Those wells are producing around 200 BOE per day, a respectful amount of production.
They have drilled several additional wells and things seem to be equally good. The decline curve seems to be holding up, that is the wells are continuing to produce as opposed to declining as has been found in Austin Chalk wells. Of course, many claim that Austin Chalk wells are being improperly drilled and "mudded" up the strata. What that means is that excessive use of mud has garbaged up the formation and inhibits the flow of oil.
Others have said that the long laterals drilled are set up improperly and collapse which inhibits the flow of oil also. Does not matter, it seems the production companies have yet to figure out how to drill and extract minerals in the Austin Chalk strata.
TMS is shale. Harder material in general but not naturally fractured. So it must be fracked. Fracking is nothing more than putting a great deal of fluid pressure on the strata causing it to open up. The Fracking fluids sometimes also contain sand to hold those minute cracks open. TMS is also below the Austin Chalk but above the Tuscaloosa Trend starta that has produced deep gas.
A new Fracking process has been used in the Permian Basin in west Texas. Slick Fracking uses fluids some of which encourage the flow of oil. A geologist tried that process out around Miland/Odessa and sparked a new boom there in oil production. He processed a different strata that heretofore had been ignored. Now things are going great guns again in the basin.
Perhaps that is the secret to Austin Chalk, slick Fracking. Who knows until we have some drilling outfit try it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Post a Comment