On one hand MAD has an issue because in the period 1947 to 1974 previous operators had drilled all those wells to extract the oil. On top of this many wells were drilled for sulphur extraction.
There could very few if any fields with the wealth of geological knowledge those wells provide in the shallower levels of the field. This knowledge was the basis for the reserve calculations in the shallower known oil horizons.
Seismic was used to locate deeper prospects for which NO reserves have been assigned.
For persons actually interested in the success of MAD some information from a Wilson HTM report on MAD.
Salt domes
Salt domes are prolific producers of oil in south-east Texas, with more than 2.5 billion barrels of oil produced since their discovery in the early 1900s. The salt dome areas have been the subject of increased activity in recent years, with modern technology successfully commercialising previously unrecovered oil. In addition to oil and gas salt domes have also been mined for salt and sulphur. About 500 salt domes exist in the USA, located in or near the Gulf of Mexico, where an ancient sea stood until the Jurassic age (~200 million years ago). The layer of salt left behind, called the Louann Salt, stretches from East Texas to the Florida Panhandle and as far north as southern Arkansas. The salt is normally located at depths of greater than 20,000 ft (6,000 m). However, in some places pressure from overlying rocks caused the salt, which is less dense and more plastic than the overlying rock, to form diapirs (1), which flowed upwards, ~30 million years ago. This movement bent, faulted and in many cases pierced the surrounding rock and created traps for oil and gas. As the salt diaper rises, salt is withdrawn from contiguous areas at the base of the column resulting in doughnut- shaped depressions termed “rim synclines”. Nearly all of the salt domes along the Gulf Coast have a cap-rock, composed of minerals such as gypsum, anhydrite, limestone and dolomite, over part or the entire surface. This cap-rock generally forms when ground water interacts with the surface of the salt. In addition, calcite and dolomite dissolve when they come in contact with ground water. This can create large cave-like holes in the cap-rock, which may then be filled with oil that has migrated from below. In the early 1900’s this led to well blowouts during drilling, such as Spindle top, near Beaumont in Texas. Salt dome crests are generally one to three miles (1.5-5 km) in diameter and buried at depths that range from zero to greater than 10,000 ft (3,000 m), but typically averaging a depth of 500 ft (150m) to the cap rock and 1,000 ft (300 m) to the salt. The steeply dipping sandstone beds on the flanks of the domes provide stratigraphic and structural traps against the salt “wall”. Tightly spaced wells are required to exploit these traps. Minimum spacing requirements do not exist on piercement-type salt domes in Texas, and hence tight well spacing can potentially access pockets of petroleum that have yet to be exploited. Maverick’s three salt dome projects are piercement-type salt domes. (1) A diapir is a type of intrusion in which a more mobile and ductile and deformable material is forced into brittle overlying rocks; from Greek diapeirein, “to pierce”.
Source: http://burnanenergyjournal.com/salt-domes/ Source: University of Wyoming
FDM Price at posting:
60.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
