G. Alan Petzet
Exploration Editor
Several dozen well bores have been drilled on the 110 sq mile Madden Deep Unit in Wyoming's Wind River basin, but at least one more ultradeep exploratory well is being prepared.
W.A. Moncrief Jr., Fort Worth, said he expects to start 1 Badwater Creek, in 12-38n-89w, Natrona County, Wyo., this month. Deepest objective is Mississippian Madison at 24,500 ft at the well, programmed to take 450 drilling days.
Participating in the well are Moncrief and a small band of independents, most of them not working interest owners in the sprawling federal unit in Fremont and Natrona counties.
Loffland Bros. Co., Tulsa, will handle the drilling. Cost of a dry hole is about $17 million. Drill site is about 44 miles southeast of Thermopolis, Wyo.
If productive of sour gas, the well will require a special nickel alloy tubing string and wellhead costing an additional $4-5 million.
WILDCAT PROSPECT
The well is a few thousand feet from the eastern boundary of the Madden Deep Unit.
It is on a seismic anomaly on the Madden anticline 8-10 miles east of two ultradeep Madison sour gas wells drilled in the 1980s and separated from them by a saddle. It is not known whether the saddle will produce, Moncrief said.
Besides Madison, the new wildcat is expected to penetrate Cretaceous Mesaverde, Cody, and Frontier, Pennsylvanian Tensleep, and several other intervening prospective formations.
Moncrief has acquired leases in about 10 sq miles just east of the Madden Deep Unit along the Owl Creek thrust fault.
Participants in 1 Badwater Creek besides Moncrief are Yates Petroleum Corp. and MYCO (Martin Yates) Industries, Artesia, N.M., and Grace Petroleum Corp., Oklahoma City.
Louisiana Land & Exploration Co., which took over earlier this month as unit operator with a 34% interest in Madden Deep Unit, is not participating in the well. Moncrief has about 33% interest in the unit.
LL&E plans to spud an obligation well on the unit in April 1991 within 2 miles west of the 1980s deep tests.
DEEP PRODUCTION
With sour gas production from Madden still about 2 years away, the unit is a prime example of long upstream lead times.
The former Monsanto Oil Co. completed 1-5 Bighorn, in 5-38n-90w, in 1985 flowing about 20 MMcfd of sour gas from Madison at 23,758-902 ft.
BHP Petroleum in 1988 finaled 2-3 Bighorn, in 3-38n-90w, flowing 38 MMcfd of gas from Madison at 23,579-852 ft. CAOF was 175 MMcfd.
Those wells are likely to become the deepest producing wells in the Rocky Mountains, although neither has been connected to a pipeline.
LL&E and Moncrief expect to receive bids this month for a 50 MMcfd, $40 million gas treatment plant to serve those two wells and, if it is successful, Moncrief's new start.
The plant will take 18 months to construct. Sulfur recovery is estimated to be 4.7 tons/MMcf of gas. Produced gas also contains about 11% carbon dioxide.
Other Madden Deep Unit working interest owners will be offered an opportunity to acquire a share of the plant.
LL&E has told its shareholders that shallower formations in Madden field have produced more than 300 bcf of gas, and that more than three times that volume remains to be produced.
The initial Madden area discovery well was drilled in 1972.
Copyright 1990 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
