Integration of Geoscience and Engineering Disciplines: An Example From Permian Basin Legacy Oil Fields

Abstract

The Permian Basin remains a petroleum-producing jewel in the United States. This is largely due to innovations in thinking, technology, and data integration over the last decade. The fields in this basin have produced for almost 100 years and operators continue to find new plays. However, “Legacy Oil” production has declined by 250,000 bbl/day since 2009 due to a lack of capital for Permian conventional reservoirs or expired mineral rights. Such fields should be re-evaluated for un-exploited potential using modern data integration techniques to include: 3D re-processed seismic data for seismic facies interpretation, core data, well log correlations, paleontological reports, mudlogs, and production data. We used this approach to re-evaluate one of Oxy’s legacy oil fields. From this evaluation, we generated a ranked list of prospects, one of which will be drilled in fall 2018.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90350 © 2019 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, May 19-22, 2019