Heterogeneous Shallow-Shelf Carbonate Buildups in the Paradox Basin, Utah and Colorado: Targets for Increased Oil Production and Reserves Using Horizontal Drilling Techniques.
The primary objective of this project was to enhance domestic petroleum production by demonstration and transfer of horizontal drilling technology in the Paradox basin, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. If this project can demonstrate technical and economic feasibility, then the technique can be applied to approximately 100 additional small fields in the Paradox basin alone, and result in increased recovery of 25 to 50 million barrels (40-80 million m3) of oil. This project was designed to characterize several shallow-shelf carbonate reservoirs in the Pennsylvania (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation, choose the best candidate(s) for a pilot demonstration project to drill horizontally from existing vertical wells, monitor well performances, and report associated validation activities.