Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on September 23, 2011 at 4:14

Interesting question, john.  I don't know the answer but I'll toss in my two cents regarding LA. and, in the process, bump this up to the top of the discussion list hoping that someone with AR. experience will provide an answer.

 

It is often misunderstood that when you are standing in one spot in the NW. LA. area of the Haynesville Shale Play, you could be standing over formations and zones that are listed in different fields.  Fields are formed not only based on surface coordinates but on the underlying stratum.  For example one section could be included in one field for the Pettit formation, another for the Hosston formation and still another for the Haynesville.  Three would be somewhat unusual but two are common place IMO.  My point is that the observation that the shales including the Fayetteville are continuous and productive over a large surface and subsurface area renders the reasons behind delineating field boundaries moot to a certain extent.  Fields in large part are used to define where certain rules of exploration and production are effective.  That makes sense when dealing with conventional reservoirs that are generally limited in the area of production.  The applicability of historic mineral codes and rules and regs are stretched if not rendered inadequate to the new paradigm of unconventional reservoirs and horizontal well development.

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Permalink Reply by The_Baron on September 23, 2011 at 5:05

To expand on Skips answer,

 

Historically a discovery well is made, and the wildcat well produces. Then a field is named, most of the time for a nearby town or even geographical feature. Then exploration would continue out and wells would continue to be drilled untill the edges of the field are found. This works great for convential resevoirs and field overlaping does occur. Maybe a Petit formation is discovered and develops westward, while a hosston formation is discovered and devlops eastward intil these two distinct fields end up overlaping each other.

 

It really wasn't such a big deal as most overlaps were fairly easy to understand, then came along the resource plays. Now we have a resevoir that extends under all the fields... so where overlaping fileds occured it usually is left to the operator to declare what filed the well is in, Conservation can change this based on thier opinion and data. You are starting to see major fields have their boundries actually set in unit orders, with the respect to the HA.

 

While I have no Fayetteville experiance, I am quite familiar with AR, mostly south AR. A similar situation exists there, and maybe is a little worse as there are big rewards for discovering a new field (in the form of severance tax relief).

 

As Skip points out, what was once a great system has become a little archaic, but don't expect to see any major changes, its really just the nature of the beast.

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Permalink Reply by Aubrey C. Sanders, Jr. on September 23, 2011 at 5:57

The appropriate setting of limits for given field is based upon known information available when a name is given. As drilling spreads from the discovery well the field limits become better defined and field boundaries change. When another discovery well is drilled with no known continuity of reservoir between the 2 discovery well. In many cases one field name would be appropriate to cover those now designated by different names. As an example IMO that the name Haynesville Field should include Springhill Field, North Shongaloo-Red Rock Field, Shongaloo Field, Dykesville Field, etc. But, when there is leap frog drilling over a 100 years connecting the dots accurately is not possible.

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Permalink Reply by Les Bamburg on September 23, 2011 at 7:01

John, the Fayetteville Shale does have some type of field boundary which allows the AOGC to aggregate production volumes.

 

The TRRC established the East Newark (Barnett Shale) Field that includes almost all the Barnett Shale production.  They followed a similar approach for the portion of the Haynesville/Bossier Shale in East Texas.

 

Louisiana did not etablish a single field for the Haynesville Shale and cannot aggregate the production.  I requested the State to implement a mechanism in 2008 but to no avail. 

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Permalink Reply by john w. parrish on September 24, 2011 at 16:13

 

thanks guys.   let me chew on this a while..thanks jwp

 

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Permalink Reply by DO Analyst on September 27, 2011 at 8:17

From my side of things having worked Arkansas exclusively from before the time the Fayetteville Shale was discovered until just recently. The AOGC defines the units by their surface locations and not by the geological locations, this provides more of a 2 dimensional unit as opposed to other states that define the unit's by surface as well as geological making for a 3 dimenstional unit.  Does this help or have I confused the situation even more.

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