arbuckle formation

guys, was asked a question on another website, thought it might be worthwhile posting my response over here.

the question was how come they never announced ( re Mississippian shale) it or did i miss it, well RFE did semi announce this over a period of time, stick with me, will take a while to explain.

the first clue was announced on 12/5/10 when RFE announced that Moebius #2-28 had hit oil bearing sands 2700 feet from their closet well expanding their find at West Tulsa.

it hit the red fork sand at 3100 feet and intersected approximately 40 feet of red fork sand.

the real interesting part of the story begins from here. instead of casing the well and preparing for production the well was now at 4200 feet and preparing to go to a target depth of 6000 feet looking for further hydrocaron bearing formations, including the ARBUCKLE formation.

The Arbuckle formation is a series of shales, one of which is the Mississippian shale.
surf around on the net to get a better picture, looking at Arbuckle formation, Mississippian shale, Arkoma basin, Oklahoma, Craig County, this should get you started.
i dont fully understand it my self, but there is heaps of info out there.

so that was our first possible reference to Mississippian shale.

on 21/5/10 we got an announcement that stated we have completed drilling and reached a target depth of 5604 feet.
it then stated we had a new productive zone with a strong show of gas on drilling and hit several potentially productive sands between 3000 and 5400 feet and said this is A VERY SIGNIFICANT ADVANCENT.


further on it extended the red fork find to 80 feet of producing sands.

RFE had found 120 feet of POSSIBLE future productive sands but where going to use this as a water well and drill Moebius #3-28 shortly.

there was a few more clues here, the extra sands obviously but also the fact they where going to use this as a water well and get Moebius #3-28 underway quickly.

the Mississippian shale in one of the documents i found said that it was a very porous rock, one water well in this shale can hold significantly more water than our existing West Tulsa Water Well, Fuss #2-33.

on 27/5/10 announcement stated that Moebius #3-28 had spudded but the target depth was only 3400 feet.
odd considering the new zones encountered at lower levels in the previous well.

on 8/6/10 announcement stated that Moebius #3-28 had successfully reached 3577 feet and found 75 feet of productive Red Fork Sand.

well was been cased and cemented for production testing.

on 16/8/10, another very important clue, Moebius#2-28 was successfully completed as a water well. Importantly this well can take up to 15000 barrels of water of day and can provide water disposal for up to 20 wells.

the question i have asked myself tonight is why did i not ask why it could take so much water, this is being disposed of into different shale with greater porousity, ie the Mississippian shale, than Fuss #2-33.

on 27/9/10 we were told Moebius #1-28 had an intial flow rate and Moebius #3-28 was still returning load water with a good show of oil and gas and both wells were now online.

0n 1/11/10 in the quarterly it mentioned Moebius #3-28 was still returning load water with high fluid levels with a good show of oil and gas.
this has always bugged me, what are the high fluid levels, i always hoped it was condensate, could be but with the higher porousity rock in the lower formation this could be additional water. but seeing that this well only supposedly went to the Red Fork sands this wouldnt apply.
when i have asked David about this well and the lack of initial flow rates, he has told me that the well would get close to stabilizing then get fluid pressure spikes and then they would have to pump out the well again, this has happened a few times and a bigger pump has been put in this well but still not stabilized.

once again we havnt heard anything yet as David has nothing concrete to release to the market but now i wonder if this well was drilled to the Red Fork sands and we just hit a highly pressurized zone or did we continue on drilling to the lower zones and the Mississippian shale?

skip forward to the AGM presentation and 2 slides captured my attention, slide 8 that talked of big takeovers in shale gas plays and slide 11.
slide 11 talks of majors shifting their focus to liquid rich plays, leasing and development of these liquid rich plays and taking horizontal drilling techniques and applying them here.

when i saw this i asked if we had hit the Mississipian shale, he said yes, in a way he had already told us, this shale is part of the Arbuckle formation mentioned on 12/5/10 but as our first well to hit this formation was turned into a water well, i suppose no real testing of these productive new zones was carried out.
David has told me multiple times that he wont release anything until he has concrete facts.

the mention of horizontal drilling also peaks my interest.
these wells obviously have higher flow rates but are more expensive initially.
tried to find some articles on flow rates in this formation, seems to vary as you head east in Oklahoma but flow rates from 500 to 2000BOPD were found. certainly not saying thats what we will have but they are possibilities.

What i do think is Moebius #2-28, while currently being used as a water well, may have changed the face of RFE forever. Whether Moebius #3-28 went to the Arbuckle formation or not i personally believe that this is a game changer for RFE.

We will all have to wait and see, certainly done alot of waiting recently but the fact that David is Definitely in Oklahoma as i type this could perhaps suggest an announcement shortly?

this is information i have gleened from past announcements and articles on the net, but any of
my opinions stated in this post are exactly that, just opinions, DYOR etc