Reviving Abandoned Reservoirs with High-Pressure Air Injection: Application in a Fractured and Karsted Dolomite Reservoir. Semi-Annual Report for November 1, 2004 through March 31, 2005.
The Bureau of Economic Geology and Goldrus Producing Company assembled a multidisciplinary team of geoscientists and engineers to evaluate the applicability of high-pressure air injection (HPAI) in revitalizing a nearly abandoned carbonate reservoir (the Barnhart Ellenburger field) in the Permian Basin of West Texas. The potential of HPAI for improved oil recovery from Barnhart field has been established in preliminary laboratory tests, studies and a reservoir pilot project. To assess the effectiveness and economics of HPAI technology more completely, we developed plans to integrate more detailed characterization of reservoir properties with laboratory modeling of flow and a field demonstration and monitoring program. Characterization and modeling elements of the study employed geoscientists and petroleum engineers from the Bureau of Economic Geology and the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (both at The University of Texas at Austin) to define controls on fluid flow in the reservoir as a basis for developing a reservoir model. Plans were to utilize this model to define a field deployment plan that Goldrus, the field operator, can implement by drilling both vertical and horizontal wells during the demonstration phase of the project. We believe that high-pressure air-injection technology has the potential to significantly increase the flow of oil from deep carbonate reservoirs in the Permian Basin, a target resource that can be conservatively estimated at more than 1.5 billion barrels. Successful implementation of this technology in the Barnhart Ellenburger field could result in the recovery of more than 34 million barrels of oil that will not otherwise be recovered.
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