Amoco plans more development and exploratory drilling this year in a 100 sq mile area of Southwest Louisiana on which it acquired 3D seismic data.
Latest focus of the program is complexly faulted South Florence field in Vermilion Parish. The 107 Watkins flowed 5.7 MMcfd of gas on a 12/64 in. choke with 5,600 psi FTP from Lower Miocene Second Trahan sand perforations at 13,735-760 ft measured depth.
The 39 Watkins confirmation well 1/2 mile south flowed 4.2 MMcfd of gas on an 11/64 in. choke with 5,750 psi FTP from Second Trahan at 11,447-467 ft.
The 25 year old field is producing 3,200 b/d of oil equivalent. It peaked at 4,200 BDOE last year, compared with the pre-3D peak of 2,400 BDOE in 1988.
Amoco is operating a wildcat permitted to 15,570 ft 2 miles southeast of the field.
Amoco in late 1994 completed the field's first horizontal well, achieving payout after 3 months' production, company authors told the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies annual meeting last October.
The 104 Watkins, the U.S. Gulf Coast's first gravel packed horizontal completion, cost $1.2 million or $600,000 less than two vertical wells that would have been needed to effectively drain the reservoir.
Production rates were about three times those of a typical vertical well. Peak producing rate shortly after being placed on production was 1,079 b/d of oil, 769 Mcfd of gas, and 27 b/d of water with 1,400 psi FTP.
The target was the upper 8 ft of a 148 ft sand with a 30 ft hydrocarbon column. The well, drilled to minimize water coning, produces from a 600 ft lateral at 5,686 ft TVD in the Miocene 5,400 ft sand lower lobe.
A scoping reservoir model predicted that the cumulative oil recovery at a well in this sand would be about twice that for a vertical completion. A horizontal well would not appreciably delay the onset of coning, but cumulative oil recovery once the economic limit is reached is much higher.
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