Speaking of verry interesting, I'am surprised we had no commentary after this WSJ article was posted last night, probably because most posters don't have on-line subscription. I'll paste it. It has to be the main reason for the PZE run today. Oil fields replenishing themselves ???? What do our oil folks think of that ?
John
April 16, 1999
Odd Reservoir Off Louisiana Prods
Oil Experts to Seek a Deeper Meaning
By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
HOUSTON -- Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330.
Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was
supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it behaved like any normal
field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about
15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.
Then suddenly -- some say almost inexplicably -- Eugene Island's fortunes reversed.
The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and
probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million.
Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of
a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.
Fill 'er Up
All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island is rapidly
refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles below the Earth's surface.
That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility that oil may not be the limited
resource it is assumed to be.
"It kind of blew me away," says Jean Whelan, a geochemist and senior researcher
from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Connected to
Woods Hole since 1973, Dr. Whelan says she considered herself a traditional
thinker until she encountered the phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, she
says, "I believe there is a huge system of oil just migrating" deep underground.
Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and that it was
deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in a process that took millions of
years. Since the economies of entire countries ride on the fundamental notion that
oil reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence "would change the way people
see the game, turn the world view upside down," says Daniel Yergin, a petroleum
futurist and industry consultant in Cambridge, Mass. "Oil and renewable resource
are not words that often appear in the same sentence."
Mideast Mystery
Doomsayers to the contrary, the world contains far more recoverable oil than was
believed even 20 years ago. Between 1976 and 1996, estimated global oil reserves
grew 72%, to 1.04 trillion barrels. Much of that growth came in the past 10 years,
with the introduction of computers to the oil patch, which made drilling for oil more
predictable.
Still, most geologists are hard-pressed to explain why the world's greatest oil pool,
the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past 20 years, despite
half a century of intense exploitation and relatively few new discoveries. It would
take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants to account for the
estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region, notes Norman Hyne, a professor at
the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. "Off-the-wall theories often turn out to be
right," he says.
Even some of the most staid U.S. oil companies find the Eugene Island discoveries
intriguing. "These reservoirs are refilling with oil," acknowledges David Sibley, a
Chevron Corp. geologist who has monitored the work at Eugene Island.
Mr. Sibley cautions, however, that much research remains to be done on the source
of that oil. "At this point, it's not black and white. It's gray," he says.
Although the world has been drilling for oil for generations, little is known about the
nature of the resource or the underground activities that led to its creation. And
because even conservative estimates say known oil reserves will last 40 years or
more, most big oil companies haven't concerned themselves much with hunting for
deep sources like the reservoirs scientists believe may exist under Eugene Island.
Economics never hindered the theorists, however. One, Thomas Gold, a respected
astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has held for
years that oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by
the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance
migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an
organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs, he says.
While many scientists discount Prof. Gold's theory as unproved, "it made a believer
out of me," says Robert Hefner, chairman of Seven Seas Petroleum Inc., a Houston
firm that specializes in ultradeep drilling and has worked with the professor on his
experiments. Seven Seas continues to use "conventional" methods in seeking
reserves, though the halls of the company often ring with dissent. "My boss and I
yell at each other all the time about these theories," says Russ Cunningham, a
geologist and exploration manager for Seven Seas who isn't sold on Prof. Gold's
ideas.
Energy Vacuum
Knowing that clever theories don't fill the gas tank, Roger Anderson, an
oceanographer and executive director of Columbia University's Energy Research
Center in New York, proposed studying the behavior of oil in a reservoir in hopes of
finding a new way to help companies vacuum up what their drilling was leaving
behind.
He focused on Eugene Island, a kidney-shaped subsurface mountain that slopes
steeply into the Gulf depths. About 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, the underwater
landscape surrounding Eugene Island is otherworldly, cut with deep fissures and
faults that spontaneously belch gas and oil. In 1985, as he stood on the deck of a
shrimp boat towing an oil-sniffing contraption through the area, Dr. Anderson
pondered Eugene Island's strange history. "Migrating oil and anomalous
production. I sort of linked the two ideas together," he says.
Five years later, the U.S. Department of Energy ponied up $10 million to investigate
the Eugene Island geologic formation, and especially the oddly behaving field at its
crest. A consortium of companies leasing chunks of the formation, including such
giants as Chevron, Exxon Corp. and Texaco Corp., matched the federal grant.
Time and Space
The Eugene Island researchers began their investigation about the same time that
3-D seismic technology was introduced to the oil business, allowing geologists to
see promising reservoirs as a cavern in the ground rather than as a line on a piece of
paper.
Taking the technology one step further, Dr. Anderson used a powerful computer to
stack 3-D images of Eugene Island on top of one another. That resulted in a 4-D
image, showing not only the reservoir in three spatial dimensions, but showing also
the movement of its contents over time as PennzEnergy siphoned out oil.
What Dr. Anderson noticed as he played his time-lapse model was how much oil
PennzEnergy had missed over the years. The remaining crude, surrounded by water
and wobbling like giant globs of Jell-O in the computer model, gave PennzEnergy
new targets as it reworked Eugene Island.
What captivated scientists, though, was a deep fault in the bottom corner of the
computer scan that was gushing oil like a garden hose. "We could see the stream,"
Dr. Anderson says. "It wasn't even debated that it was happening."
Woods Hole's Dr. Whelan, invited by Dr. Anderson to join the Eugene Island
investigation, postulated that superheated methane gas -- a compound that is able
to absorb vast amounts of oil -- was carrying crude from a deep source below. The
age of the crude pushed through the stream, and its hotter temperature helped
support that theory. The scientists decided to drill into the fault.
Unlucky Strike
As prospectors, the scientists were fairly lucky. As researchers they weren't. The
first well they drilled hit natural gas, a pocket so pressurized "that it scared us," Dr.
Anderson says; that well is still producing. The second stab, however, collapsed
the fault. "Some oil flowed. I have 15 gallons of it in my closet," Dr. Anderson says.
But it wasn't successful enough to advance Dr. Whelan's theory.
A third well was drilled at a spot on an adjacent lease, where the fault disappeared
from seismic view. The researchers missed the stream but hit a fair-size reservoir,
one that is still producing.
It was here, in 1995, that the scientists ran out of grant money and PennzEnergy lost
interest in continuing. "I'm not discounting the possibility that there is oil moving
into these reservoirs," says William Van Wie, a PennzEnergy senior vice president.
"I question only the rate."
Dr. Whelan hasn't lost interest, however, and is seeking to investigate further the
mysterious vents and seeps. While industry geologists have generally assumed
such eruptions are merely cracks in a shallow oil reservoir, they aren't sure. Noting
that many of the seeps are occurring in deep water, rather than in the relative
shallows of the continental shelf, Dr. Whelan wonders if they may link a deeper
source.
This summer, a tiny submarine chartered by a Louisiana State University researcher
will attempt to install a series of measuring devices on vents near the Eugene Island
property. Dr. Whelan hopes this will give her some idea of how quickly Eugene
Island is refilling. "We need to know if we're talking years or if we're talking
hundreds of thousands of years," she says.
|
