Application of Advanced Reservoir Characterization, Simulation, and Production Optimization Strategies to Maximize Recovery in Slope and Basin Clastic Reservoirs, West Texas (Delaware Basin)
The objective of this Class III project is to demonstrate that detailed reservoir characterization of clastic reservoirs in basinal sandstones of the Delaware Mountain Group in the Delaware Basin of West Texas and New Mexico is a cost-effective way to recover more of the original oil in place by strategic infill-well placement and geologically based enhanced oil recovery. The study focused on the Ford Geraldine unit, which produces from the upper Bell Canyon Formation (Ramsey sandstone). Reservoirs in this and other Delaware Mountain Group fields have low producibility (average recovery <14 percent of the original oil in place) because of a high degree of vertical and lateral heterogeneity caused by depositional processes and post-depositional diagenetic modification. Outcrop analogs were studied to better interpret the depositional processes that formed the reservoirs at the Ford Geraldine unit and to determine the dimensions of reservoir sandstone bodies. Facies relationships and bedding architecture within a single genetic unit exposed in outcrop in Culberson County, Texas, suggest that the sandstones were deposited in a system of channels and levees with attached lobes that initially prograded basinward, aggraded, and then turned around and stepped back toward the shelf. Channel sandstones are 10 to 60 ft thick and 300 to 3,000 ft wide. The flanking levees have a wedge-shaped geometry and are composed of interbedded sandstone and siltstone; thickness varies from 3 to 20 ft and length from several hundred to several thousands of feet. The lobe sandstones are broad lens-shaped bodies; thicknesses range up to 30 ft with aspect ratios (width/thickness) of 100 to 10,000. Lobe sandstones may be interstratified with laminated siltstones.
- Research Organization:
- Federal Energy Technology Center, Morgantown, WV, and Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC22-95BC14936
- OSTI ID:
- 2202
- Report Number(s):
- DE-FC22-95BC14936-17; ON: DE00002202
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Application of advanced reservoir characterization, simulation, and production optimization strategies to maximize recovery in slope and basin clastic reservoirs, West Texas (Delaware Basin). Technical progress report
Application of advanced reservoir characterization, simulation, and production optimization strategies to maximize recovery in slope and basin clastic reservoirs, West Texas (Delaware Basin). Quarterly report, October 1 - December 31, 1996