Summary of Publicly Available Production Data for the Devonian Berea Sandstone Play, Eastern Kentucky

Abstract

The Devonian Berea “Sandstone” was discovered in Lawrence County in the late 1870's. Major Berea development occurred in the 1920's and in the late 1950's with the advent of waterflooding. In the 1980's, Section 29 tight formation tax credits temporarily made the Berea interesting again. Recently, horizontal drilling and slickwater fracture stimulations have led to a Berea renaissance with Lawrence County now the leading oil-producing county in the state. Berea wells completed since 1997 were selected that had enough periods of publicly available production data for analysis to characterize the initial performance of the wells.

The maximum reported monthly production rate, first year cumulative production volume, and production decline were modeled. For each well with sufficient data, the better fit of an exponential or hyperbolic decline curve was used to characterize production trends. A gas production index was defined as the ratio of gas production to the sum of oil and gas production on a barrels of oil equivalent basis and used to map regional trends in oil- and gas-prone production. Well performance was divided into three classes based on the first year cumulative production at the 25th and 75th percentiles. Typical oil and gas decline curves for each of these groups exhibit significant differences relative to predicted future performance.

Based on limited historic production data, Berea oil producers out-perform typical Kentucky wells. The Berea in Greenup and Lawrence counties is oil-prone while Pike County exhibits a significant wet gas-prone area with some wells reporting varying amounts of oil production.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90258 © 2016 AAPG Eastern Section Meeting, Lexington, Kentucky, September 25-27, 2016