I have recently read a couple of reports on the Reeves County/Delaware Basin geology suggesting up to 108 million barrels of oil in place per section.
With regard to current expectations per well re. Eventual recoveries…400-700 mbo/ horizontal well, north of town and 140-240 mbo in the vertical play to the south.
Sound about right?
There seems to be a disconnect here somewhere. Firstly, why horizontal to the north and not vertical? It seems that the economics in Reeves County have favored the vertical wells, based on all of the activity to the south, whereas not nearly as much drilling to the north and east. Why not verticals here???
Back to the estimated original oil in place, if just 8-10% was to be recovered over time, we are talking about much, much higher recoveries than current projections allow. For instance, 16 wells drilled on 40 acre spacings at 180 mbo gives a section 2,880,000 barrels of oil which would be 3% of that 108 mmbo in place we talked about.
Stephen, you’re numbers are right, but there’s more to it. Bill Fairhurst and others have projected recovery of 3-12% per section, the lower 3% representing vertical wells and the higher numbers representing horizontals with greater exposure to the play of a given zone. All that only adds up when you realize that because of the stacked pays to fully recover from each zone could mean dozens of horizontal wells per section, each horizontal recovering from one of the zones. In some areas the estimate is for 7 or more pay zones, and each horizontal well recovers from one, so multiple horizontals stacked on each other only drain from a 160-320 acre area.
If you watch the numbers most companies are actively drilling just to hold by production their leased acreage, some companies like J Cleo Thompson (still king of Reeves production) are starting to get closer to the real production as they down space to collect more from each lease. So one well just holds an acreage, but when you have the 5th, 6th, 8th or whatever well on a lease the production starts to look like an estimated ultimate recovery per section that makes sense of the numbers. Last I heard someone in the know talk about Reeves the recovery was being projected at 20% of what’s in place, he didn’t specify horizontal or vertical but horizontal was most likely.
I am hoping that Shell coming into southern Reeves county will help…their refinery on the gulfcoast could mean they’ll spend some money on the needed infrastructure and pipeline capacity. Currently no point in going whole hog on the wells if you can’t get it to market.
Several companies are looking to ramp up drilling in 2013. But it still takes multiple wells on each lease to recover the bonanza Reeves holds.
Sarah
Sarah, J.Cleo just permitted our third well in Block 13 yesterday, so we are starting to have it happen. The Eagle Presentation was impressive and I have saved it as a reference.
EUR is a figure used in the calculation of risk for well drilling investment.
Let me put it this way, an EUR estimate is from the perspective of the well owner, a measure to help gauge whether the capital risked be recovered and a profit made from the production the well provides.
Our perspective from that of the land, that is, the mineral acre rights holder. Generally we are concerned about how much oil/gas will be produced from the deposits within the land under the surface.
The hydrocarbon deposits will be revisited for extraction again and again whenever a advancement in extraction method allows an economic return from the resources still in place. The deposits do not have to leave by leave through the bore of a single well during the lifetime of that well.
The method of rock fracture is evolving, the placement of the fracture zones is evolving, the ability to make more of the volume of the rock holding tight oil more permeable is evolving.
Methods of field pressurization /re-pressurization, oil deposit sweeping by water shock wave, water sweep/water injection, CO2 injection, microbe treatment, three dimensional underground mapping, drilling methods,
and, the technologies applied to further improvement, all are still evolving.
There is of course a limit, but I think that that absolute limit has not yet been reached.
So many variables. It’s all about what can be eventually extracted and depending on what part of the county you are in, the numbers tend to change, as best as I can figure.
I noticed in Rosetta Resources’ recent presentation that they are giving their wells an aggressive 260,000 bo for EUR (estimated ultimate recovery). This is considerably higher than I have previously seen. Everything is based on vertical 40 acre spacings and mention is also made about possible down spacing from that potentially.