Abstract: Development of Mills Ranch Complex, Texas and Oklahoma

Robert M. Jemison, Jr.

The Mills Ranch complex is fast developing into one of the largest fields in the deep Anadarko basin. This complex is part of a deeply buried granite uplift which extends northwest-southeast for 15 m (24 km) or more from Wheeler County, Texas, into Beckham County, Oklahoma. It is a long narrow anticlinal feature paralleling a northwest-southeast-striking thrust fault and is complicated by numerous faults and unconformities. The discovery well of the deep Mills Ranch-Hunton play which started a large drilling program was the Freeport Oil Co. 1 Sidney Fabian which was drilled in 1972 to a depth of 21,640 ft (6,596 m) and completed at a calculated open flow rate of 93,050 Mcf/day. Since that time a continuous program, chiefly by the Chevron-Freeport group, has proved at leas three separate productive reservoirs in the Hunton. The Hunton section averages 929 ft (283 m) in thickness, and produces from both the Chimneyhill and the Henryhouse sections. Wells in the Hunton on the main structure are capable of producing up to 20,000 Mcf/day.

The deepest commercial production in the world was found from the Arbuckle at 22,918 ft to 23,938 ft (6,985 to 7,296 m) in the Chevron et al 1 James which was completed in August 1976. An offset well, the Chevron et al 1 Ledbetter, has been drilled to 26,500 ft (8,079 m) into the Arbuckle. Deeper production on the Mills Ranch complex could cause increased deep drilling activity in fields presently producing only from the Hunton as well as on nonproducing structures in this part of the Anadarko basin.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90961©1978 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma