By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Oct. 29 -- Encore Acquisition Co., Fort Worth, is exploring for oil in the highly overpressured Cretaceous Tuscaloosa marine shale and has accumulated 210,000 net acres along the Louisiana-Mississippi line east of the Mississippi River.
The company mapped a silt in the shale that is of sufficient integrity to drill a horizontal wellbore. It has drilled and cased to just beyond 17,000 ft measured depth the Weyerhaeuser-1H, in irregular section 60-1s-4e, in the northwestern corner of St. Helena Parish, La.
Encore Acquisition plans to attempt completion in the well's 4,100-ft lateral, but the attempt has been delayed 5 weeks due to the short supply of high-strength proppant.
The company, which has drilled four horizontal wells in the play in 2008, took a $26.3 million impairment charge on the first two, Richland Plantation-A1 in East Feliciana Parish and Joe Jackson 4-13H in Amite County, Miss.
"These appraisal wells, while experiencing some mechanical problems, demonstrated the ability to drill a horizontal lateral in a stable shale and establish sustained oil production from the TMS," Encore Acquisition said. The company hasn't booked any proved reserves in the shale.
Louisiana State University's Basin Research Institute estimated that the shale could hold 7 billion bbl of recoverable oil in a large area extending entirely across south Louisiana and southern Mississippi (see map, OGJ, Dec. 29, 1997, p. 91).
