Posted on 12/20/2013 10:36:26 PM PST by ckilmer
By Keith Kohl
Friday, December 20th, 2013
At around 6 o'clock on the morning of May 28, 1923, an oil well named after the patron saint of the impossible blew. The well sprayed oil over the top of the derrick and covered a 250-yard area around the site.
This is the infamous picture of it:
On that morning, the oil boom in West Texas was born. The name of the well was Santa Rita No. 1.
For the next 50 years, oil from West Texas flooded the world. Wildcatters, ranchers, and residents of sleepy cowtowns became instant millionaires as they struck one gusher after another...
This region in West Texas has pumped out over 35 billion barrels since Santa Rita No. 1 started spewing black gold.
The Petroplex peaked in production between 1973 and 1974, as predicted by Shell geologist M. King Hubbert. At its height, it was pumping out over 1.7 million barrels per day.
When it peaked, it marked the end of American oil domination and ushered in OPEC... and for the next 40 years, OPEC would have a stranglehold on the world's energy economy.
They pushed everybody around whenever they wanted to. When they got mad, they cut production, driving up the price of oil and gasoline. And they would bankrupt any competition to their monopoly by increasing production and flooding the market with cheap oil.
But that was four decades ago.
A lot of things have changed — and quite dramatically...
The source rock is like a giant pressure cooker heating all of that organic matter into billions upon billions of barrels of oil. Source rocks are typically so highly pressurized and so full of oil, they literally push the hydrocarbons closer to the surface into surrounding reservoirs.
Every drop of oil pumped out of the ground since the first well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859 was first created by a source rock. Every drop!
Although oil companies have known about source rocks for decades, they couldn't drill into them, because it was either too expensive or the technology didn't exist. But that has all changed now with the advances in hydraulic fracturing and with oil selling for more than $90 a barrel.
And that's exactly what's happening in the Petroplex...
For the first time ever, companies are now extracting oil directly from the source rock in the Petroplex, and the early results from these new wells are already a game-changer — all because of the technological revolution in hydraulic fracturing developed in the United States.
What's more is that oil workers are rushing into the Petroplex like army ants. And it's easy to see why...
Large parts of the Petroplex shale are between 3,500 and 4,000 feet thick. That's about three-quarters of a mile in length. That's huge. Nothing like it has ever been discovered before.
To give you an idea of how big that is, the Bakken in North Dakota is between 10 and 25 feet thick. The Eagle Ford in South Texas is around 35 feet thick. Both the Bakken and Eagle Ford are currently producing a combined two million barrels of oil equivalent per day. That's more than the oil produced by OPEC members Ecuador, Angola, and Qatar.
In a few short years, the Bakken and Eagle Ford will be producing more oil than OPEC members Libya, Algeria, Kuwait, Nigeria, and Venezuela...
But the Petroplex in West Texas is much, much bigger.
Twice the Size of New Jersey
The sheer size of it is mind-boggling.
In terms of square miles, the Petroplex is bigger than the states of Maryland, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. In fact, it's twice the size of the state of New Jersey.
Large parts of its shale is so thick, it's like finding 140 Bakkens — or over 100 Eagle Fords — stacked on top of one another.
The industry jargon for this is a stacked pay zone. Think of it as a layered birthday cake — with many layers. Actually, think of it as five separate layered birthday cakes, all stacked on top of one another.
So even without hydraulic fracturing, a driller can access three... four... maybe even five different shale formations with just one vertical well.
That's why in early 2013, Chinese company Sinochem entered into a $1.7 billion joint venture with Pioneer just to get its foot in the door of the Petroplex.
Make no mistake; 100 billion barrels is nothing to sneeze at. That would make it the second-largest oil region in the world, next to Saudi Arabia's Ghawar oil field.
However, the Ghawar oilfield has been pumping non-stop for over 65 years. It's old and near exhaustion. The Saudis are doing everything in their power to keep the oil flowing out of Ghawar — even blasting millions of gallons of seawater into the field's wells to squeeze out every ounce of oil.
But this new oil field in the Petroplex — thanks to the success of extracting oil with hydraulic fracturing — just started producing.
And get this: Devon Energy — a $26 billion oil and gas company and one of the largest landowners in the Petroplex — has studied the formation inside and out...
They estimate there's a 9,800-square-mile block inside the Petroplex that contains 3.6 million barrels of recoverable oil PER SQUARE MILE! That's nearly 36 billion barrels of oil just in that block... and they say it's all recoverable.
Until next time,
Keith Kohl
Given the amount of oil in the Permian basin mentioned above, how deep and densely packed it is and the easy access that fracking provides...its easy to see how this field alone could produce 5-10 million barrels @ day. Right now its producing less than 2 million barrels a day.
The awesomeness of this field I don’t think has yet come into full view.
The EIA’s reckoning for oil expansion at an 800K clip for the next two years...I don’t think takes into account that the permian basin has only barely got started what has to be a tremendous expansion in oil production.
Make no mistake; 100 billion barrels is nothing to sneeze at. That would make it the second-largest oil region in the world, next to Saudi Arabia's Ghawar oil field.
Green River Formation weighs in at 3Trillion barrels of oil with 1Trillion recoverable with today's technology
CNSNews.com) - The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday.
The GAO testimony said that the federal government was in “a unique position to influence the development of oil shale” because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land. - See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gao-recoverable-oil-colorado-utah-wyoming-about-equal-entire-world-s-proven-oil#sthash.xD4DIF9l.dpuf
Green River Formation weighs in at 3Trillion barrels of oil with 1Trillion recoverable with today’s technology ..
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Yeah I know. but its not going to happen any time soon. One of the biggest investors in the green river oil shale, is shell oil. they have recently decided to pull out.
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the fields in the permian basin are going to be adding several million barrels a day in production in the next several years.
Its not fully appreciated how much oil is going to come blasting out of the permian basin.
so what is out-of-reach today is a commonplace 10 years hence.
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yeah. my dad died in late march 2004 a couple months before reagan. In january of that year we were watching the mars rover moving around on the surface of mars.
My dad said, “I can’t believe I’m alive to see this.”
If we’re around in a couple decades, I agree, its best to expect some amazing things.
(Now all we gotta do if keep our wits, health & finances in order.)
I like this. In the past there was a huge wealth transfer from America to OPEC. Now the wealth transfer will be from America to TEXAS! GOD BLESS TEXAS!
> in early 2013, Chinese company Sinochem entered into a $1.7 billion joint venture with Pioneer just to get its foot in the door of the Petroplex.
Thanks ckilmer.
Source rocks are typically so highly pressurized and so full of oil, they literally push the hydrocarbons closer to the surface into surrounding reservoirs.
Sometimes....ya know...it almost seems like it was all designed by Someone...Somewhere...
You kinda struck a nerve with that one “My dad said, “I can’t believe I’m alive to see this”. Started out in this business in the mid 60’s doing part time work during summer breaks in high school. 4 years in the Army then a short stint with the Sheriffs department while pumping wells on the side. Went back full time in the late 70’s and never looked back. To see where we were when I started and looking at where we are now, I stand in amazement! I wish your POP was here to see it, he would be proud.
For those who want to see a 6 minute video showing how horizontal drilling and fracking is done, Northern Gas and Oil has done a great one.
This includes a piece on how groundwater contamination is avoided:
http://www.northernoil.com/drilling-video
Knowledge is power, keep the link and pass it on.
The green river formation is kerogen, not oil and not yet separated from the rock. Drilling alone won’t produce it. It requires retorting, or cooking it out, to then make a synthetic crude oil.
It is a far more expensive and slower to produce than an oil field, even a tight formation like seen in the Bakken or Eagle Ford.
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