ABSTRACT: Developing and Extending Oil and Gas Fields Without Use of Computers, Remote Sensing, Seismic, and Nonconventional Methods

MEAR, CHARLES E., Cross Timbers Oil Company, Fort Worth, TX

Most of the geologists who work either as independents or for nonmajor oil companies do not have access to sophisticated seismic data, remote sensing information, and computer-derived maps. Nevertheless, geologists at small companies, such as Cross Timbers Oil, continue to extend oil and gas fields, and develop significant new reserves. They manage to do this by using the same tools (observation and deduction) used by geologists who worked the Permian basin before the 1970s, with the synergistic addition of input from engineers and production personnel. To paraphrase Wallace Pratt, these oil and gas reserves are being found in the minds of engineers, geologists, and production people who are working as a team. The team has had to overcome log analyses that were wrong due to incorrect onclusions about the composition of reservoir beds, miscorrelations of the reservoirs due to use of erroneous geological models, and disastrous completion techniques used by majors and independents. These errors were overcome by rational thinking. Several stratigraphically trapped oil and gas fields in the Knox-Baylor basin of north Texas and on the Anadarko shelf of Oklahoma were extended by using only basic geologic and engineering concepts. The concepts may be useful for geologists who work in the Permian basin.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91018©1992 AAPG Southwest Section Meeting, Midland, Texas, April 21-24, 1992 (2009)