John McCaslin
Exploration Editor
Utah's Paradox basin is once again in the exploratory news, a rare event in these slim wildcatting days.
There has been little to crow about in recent years in southeastern Utah's remote and vast Paradox basin. In a basin made famous by the big oil fields at Lisbon and Aneth in earlier years, exploratory drilling began to fade away in the 1980's. But things are looking up in San Juan County. In the past few months, several new oil finds in and around Aneth and to the far north of this mammoth field may be what is needed to get a new round of wildcats going in one of the most interesting and geologically impressive basins in the business.
AN ALGAL REEF MOUND HUNT
This year's most commanding wildcat program thus far just has to be the algal reef mound action that's underway in Southeast Utah.
A wildcat drilled by Chuska Energy in the Greater Aneth area reported high production potential from two zones of the Pennsylvanian Desert Creek Paradox zone. This report was made public by one of the partners in the joint venture in the colorful Four Corners region.
Magellan Petroleum Australia Ltd., a subsidiary of Magellan Petroleum Corp., said the 1 Anasazi in SW NW 5-42s-24e, about 15 miles southeast of Bluff in San Juan County, flowed oil at the rate of 1,635 b/d on an 8 hour test in the lower Desert Creek at 5,646-70 ft and at the rate of 705 b/d from the shallower upper Desert Creek from 5,574 to 5,630 ft.
Petroleum Information of Denver notes that the test in the lower Desert Creek was on a 1 in. choke with a flowing tubing pressure of 225 psi. The upper Desert Creek was tested for 17 hours on a three fourths in. choke with 100 psi tubing pressure.
COMES UP WITH A DUO
Very seldom can we come up with two new oil discoveries in the Paradox basin to report in one column.
The Anasazi strike apparently drilled into an algal reef mound separate from the one found by Chuska at 1 Sahgzie in NE NW 5-42s-24e, about one half mile northeast. That well was completed last year in the upper Desert Creek at 5,590-98 ft and the lower Desert Creek at 5,644-64 ft.
Magellan reports this well is also a big producer. For the past couple of months or so, the well has been making 350 b/d of oil.
These wildcats were drilled as part of an interesting program to evaluate several algal reef mounts along the southern edge of big Aneth field. This is a part of a joint effort being worked on by Chuska in partnership with six Australian companies on Navajo Indian lands in the four state area of southeastern Utah, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and northeastern New Mexico.
Petroleum Information adds that there is even more work to the south where Chuska and its compadres have begun development drilling in the Black Rock field of Apache County, Arizona, southwest of Teec Nos Pos. Plans here call for an increase in production from 8,000,000 cu ft of gas today to 20,000,000 cu ft per day later.
Copyright 1990 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.