Monday, June 06, 2011
Rigzone Staff
by Karen Boman
The Tuscaloosa Marine shale play, located on the border of southwestern Mississippi and northeast Louisiana, could emerge as the next big oil shale play as oil and gas producers shift their focus from gas to oil drilling and seek to unlock unconventional resources in unexplored shale plays.
The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources Office of Conservation will hold a public hearing on June 7 in Baton Rouge to approve a drilling production unit that Devon Energy has applied for in the Tuscaloosa play near Ethel in East Feliciana Parish.
Devon holds 250,000 acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine shale play. Devon spokesperson Chip Minty said it is still too early to quantify the liquids content of this acreage. The company plans to drill two horizontal wells this year on its Tuscaloosa shale acreage, which Devon officials said is stratigraphically equivalent to the Eagle Ford shale play and has a low average acreage cost of $180/acre. The company will have a rig on site in this year's second quarter.
The company's Tuscaloosa activity is part of Devon's goal of identifying and establishing large acreage positions in highly economic plays at reasonable prices. "We have continued building these new venture positions and now have roughly 850,000 net acres and a handful of new plays, primarily targeting oil and liquid rich gas," the company said.
The Tuscaloosa shale on Devon's acreage is approximately 200 to 400 feet thick, at depths of 11,000 to 14,000 feet across Devon's acreage position. Oil production has been established, up dip in the play from the Tuscaloosa Shale, said David Hager, Devon's executive vice president of exploration and production, during Devon's first quarter 2011 earnings conference call in early May. "We plan to utilize horizontal drilling and fracture simulation to enhance the productivity of the reservoir in both the oil and liquids-rich portion of the play."
Denbury Resources recently signed a small joint venture covering its Tuscaloosa Marine Shale acreage wherein the partner will complete one well and drill another at no cost to us, leaving Denbury with a small retained interest in future activities. Denbury in late 2009 agreed to acquire EnCore, which had drilled four horizontal wells targeting the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale play in 2007 and 2008. The JV will allow Denbury to develop this acreage it acquired with the EnCore acquisition.
The first Tuscaloosa Marine shale well was tested in 1975; to date, five well have been tested and produced. The Tuscaloosa Shale has an unproven unconventional resource estimate of 7 billion barrels of oil, according to a report by researchers at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
The marine shale section lies between sands of the upper and lower Tuscaloosa sections and varies in thickness from 500 feet in southwestern Mississippi to more than 800 feet in the southern part of the Florida parishes in Louisiana. The Tuscaloosa Marine Shale is very similar in geology to the Eagle Ford, and is believed to have the same potential for development and production.
Brammer Engineering and Indigo II Louisiana Operating hold permits in the same area as the Tuscaloosa shale. Indigo Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bill Pritchard said he sees potential for Tuscaloosa shale production in the acreage it received from Roy O. Martin Minerals, Louisiana's largest private landowner, in exchange for equity in Indigo.
The company put together about 240,000 acres in central Louisiana, of which half has been leased to timber companies; Indigo will focus its Tuscaloosa exploration efforts on the remaining half. Indigo drilled the Bentley Lumber 32-1 vertical well, and will drill the Indigo Bentley Lumber 23H-1 horizontal well in July.
The company's acreage is northwest of the area where Devon and EnCore have drilled, but the interval Indigo is targeting sits above the Edwards carbonate formation; to the east, the Eagle Ford/Tuscaloosa play overlies the main body of the Lower Tuscaloosa sandstone. Indigo's acreage features a higher percentage of calcite, which makes it more brittle and easier to frack. The company set intermediate casing just above the shale and drilled with oil based mud. "That and the fact that we are more calcitic through the section allowed us to drill through the TMS [Tuscaloosa Marine Shale] without incident," Pritchard said.
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