By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Aug. 8 -- Whiting Petroleum Corp. has completed its $343 million acquisition of Postle oil and gas field in the Oklahoma Panhandle, setting the stage for a large carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery project expansion.
Whiting has signed a 10-year CO2 purchase agreement to support the expansion.
Seller of the field, in Texas County, Okla., 120 miles north of Amarillo, Tex., is Celero Energy LP, Midland. Effective date is July 1, 2005.
Postle's five producing units and one lease cover 25,600 gross acres with 88 producing and 78 injection wells. The field averaged 4,350 b/d of oil and natural gas liquids and 400 Mcfd of gas in the first quarter of 2005 from Pennsylvanian Morrow sand at 6,100 ft. Two rotaries and 6 workover rigs are at work.
Considered one of Oklahoma's smaller major fields, Postle was discovered in 1958. The former Mobil Oil Corp. developed it in the early 1960s and unitized it for waterflood in 1967.
CO2 injection started in 1996 in three units on roughly the eastern half of the field, boosting output by 8,000 b/d to more than 11,000 b/d by 1999. Mobil deferred expansion to the other units, partly because of throughput limits at a third party gas processing plant.
Whiting acquired the Dry Trails gas plant in the Celero transaction and is expanding it to 60 MMcfd from 40 MMcfd. Another addition to 80 MMcfd will take place as CO2 projects are expanded.
Whiting also acquired a 60% interest in the 128-mile TransPetco pipeline, which delivers CO2 to Postle from Bravo Dome field in Northeast New Mexico.
Postle, the fifth largest oil-producing field in Oklahoma in 2004, is the only major oil field in the state to have increased production in the last 10 years, notes the Oklahoma Geological Survey. Output has dropped sharply since 1999 but in 2004 was still double the rate of 10 years earlier, according to IHS Energy figures.
Whiting plans to close the acquisition of North Ward Estes field in West Texas from Celero in October 2005.
