Abstract: Ranger, Fault Block 6: FO-Sand Horizontal Drilling, Long Beach Unit, Wilmington Oil Field

LINDSEY, KIRBY, THUMS Long Beach Company, Long Beach, CA; CRIS VALDES-CAMIN, THUMS Long Beach Company, Long Beach, CA

The FO sand in the Ranger Zone, Fault Block 6 is a thick, laterally continuous, unconsolidated sand package characterized by relatively high porosity and permeability. Bounding shales within the sand are discontinuous in the crestal area allowing significant water slumping to occur. This phenomenon, along with production difficulties associated with water coning into conventional wells, has left large areas of bypassed oil at the top of the formation. Conventional production wells drain only a relatively small area of hydrocarbons before coning large volumes of water; however, drilling horizontally near the top of the reservoir increases recovery by maximizing the effective drainage area and suppressing coning.

The horizontal drilling program at THUMS was therefore developed to adequately capture bypassed reserves. Although uncertainty of lateral shale continuity can pose significant geologic risk, to date, nine successful horizontal wells have been drilled based on simulation work and pass-through log data. Production results indicate that the horizontal wells can produce from a fairly tight spacing with little or no offset interference.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90911©2000 AAPG Pacific Section and Western Region Society of Petroleum Engineers, Long Beach, California