N. La - S. Ark. pre-salt
This is a bit off the wall a bit but with the spectacular success in the pre-salt of offshore Brazil and the flurry of activity in the W. African coastal pre-salt, one wonders when industry will look seriously at a similar play in North Louisiana and South Arkansas.
The areas are geologically similar, only separated in time by about 100 million years or so. In the early Cretaceous the Atlantic began to open up, rift basins developed that were overlain by thick salt from periodic inflows and evaporation of seawater. This provided the perfect seal for the pre-salt structures and graben filling lake deposits.
Flash back to the Triassic when the Gulf of Mexico began opening, similar rift valleys opened, many were filled by the Eagle Mills formation. Later influx and evaporation of seawater created the overlying Louann salt which has been considered the "basement" for oil companies. There have been a handful of pre-salt penetrations over the years, the most intriguing being the Union Producing 1-Tensas Delta, 8-22N-4E, that in 1940 drilled through 1200' of Pennsylvanian marine shale below the salt.
Seismic data is problematic below the salt new processing techniques are beginning to overcome that. That said, it was clear on 80's - 90's vintage data that huge structures were present. One wonders if the big boys will ever take a new look?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on -
Maybe Jim Bob will be successful down South and someone will jump on the bandwagon.
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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on
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Robert, I found the letter about the electric logs interesting but it would have been nice if the historic well file actually included a link to the referenced logs. Have you had the opportunity to view those logs?
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Permalink Reply by Checkmateking on -
I remember some Eagle Mills stuff in Cass County that was around 15,000 feet I believe
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Permalink Reply by Robert Phillips on
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Skip, I have never seen a log of the Union Producing well with the Morehouse shale. The top was at 9285'. The top of the Smackover in that well is about 7500' and I'm going to guess about 500' thick - and that's just purely a guess. The Norphlet is very thin so if the Morehouse is immediately below the Louann then the salt there is about 1200' +/- thick. The base of the salt is very flat showing only regional dip, but it masks what appeared to be very large structures below it on the seismic data I saw back in the day.
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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This one may have went through the salt but I am no geologist. #188719
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I am not good at retrieving wells on Sonris. Was that the Sohio well in Concordia Ph.?
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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Yep it went to about 25,000 if I remember correctly and I think there is several decent kinds of logs on the well. You have to go onto Sonris Document Access and click on types of documents scroll down to near the bottom and click on well logs then put in the serial number check the box that says get other associated documents, I always hold the ctrl key and click search I don't let up on the ctrl key until the document list pops up. I think you may have to download the Sonris software to be able to pull up the docs.
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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Two of the logs are too small for me to look at even if you zoom in all the way but the other 2 are large enough to read.
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You're in luck, Two Dogs. I'm the geologist that sold that prospect to Sohio in 1982. It was a Cotton Valley test, south of the Cotton Valley shelf edge. We were hoping to find sandstone reservoirs simiiar to those in the L. Tuscaloosa trend that was so prolific further south. The structure was huge, covering a township, just downthrown to a regional growth fault at the shelf margin. By the time the well was completed as a dry hole I was with another company in another city. I knew it was P&A'd but never saw a log. The risk was always that updip Cotton Valley sands are inheritently tighter and thinner than those in the Tuscaloosa and would they have have been transported that far south.
It never came close to the Louann Salt, likely never getting through the entire Cotton Valley.
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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If I remember the story correctly, it was in the time frame when O&G hit the skids and they stacked the rig on site and put a guard at the gate for a long time. I wonder if that was one of the big rigs that they had in the day that got shipped overseas?
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I have no idea, I lost track of it after changing companies in '83 and then moving out of state in '86. I know the well cost was projected at $10 million, which was really big money 30 years ago. The price of nat. gas was deregulated in '85, I think, and was about $2 MCF. Price of oil collapsed in '86.
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Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on
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It would be interesting if someone would look at the log to see if there are any shows from the TMS or other targets that could be promising with todays tech.
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