Technique could double U.S. oil reserves

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 A fossil fuel division of the U.S. Energy Department says experimental oil production was a success and could double U.S. oil reserves.

Tulsa, Okla.-based Grand Resources Inc. used Energy Department funding to revitalize two abandoned fields on the tribal lands of the Osage Indian nation, which are now averaging 103 barrels a day.

The 3-year-old pilot program has produced 6,000 barrels so far, using a new technique of horizontal wall waterflooding.

Vertical waterflooding is a more common technique, using water injections to repressurize a used well and push out remaining oil.

But the Osage wells in northeastern Oklahoma are so fractured any added pressure would push the liquid further into the earth, according to a news release by the Office of Fossil Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

In horizontal drilling, a vertical borehole is drilled first, thenkicked off at a roughly 90-degree angle through an underground formation, the release states. Grand Resources' chief innovation was to design a horizontal waterflood program that could be economic for a shallow, underpressured, highly fractured reservoir. The company also developed special techniques to economically drill and monitor the shallow horizontal wells without damaging the producing formation.Grand Resources received its funding under the Energy Department's Native American Initiative, aimed at economic development and fossil fuel exploration on Native American land. The Osage could receive royalties on such production.

The release said if the technology is brought to market, it could reinvigorate thousands of old oil fields while it could double the 218 billion barrels the United States currently holds in crude reserves.

Copyright 2006 by UPI

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