Information Only - Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - U.S. Department of ...

Information Only
XI-ll
in the southwest quarter of sec. 31 T22S R31E, which underlies the WIPP land
withdrawal area. Gas production was established in September 1982 from an Atoka
sandstone reservoir at depths of 13,466 to 13,477 ft. The well remains productive and
had produced a cumulative total of 4.664 billion ft3 of nonassociated gas, 27.5
thousand bbls of condensate, and 2.8 thousand bbls of brine as of December 31,
1993. See Silva (1992, 1994) for some discussion of this well.
No additional wells have been drilled for oil and gas with either surface
locations or bottom-hole locations within the boundaries of the WIPP land withdrawal
area. Several shallow engineering and potash core holes were drilled within the
boundaries of WIPP, but these holes were not drilled deep enough to penetrate strata
productive of oil and gas. Griswold (this report) has summarized these shallow core
holes.' -. ~
Bass Enterprises submitted applications to drill eight wells within the boundaries
of the WIPP land withdrawal area from surface locations outside of the site
(Table 6) for purposes of establishing hydrocarbon production. The applications to
drill were denied by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in August 1994. See
Ramey (this report) for a copy of the letter from the Bureau of Land Management to
Bass Enterprises in which the applications to drill were denied.
DELAWARE MOUNTAIN GROUP
The Delaware Mountain Group (Guadalupian) is the major oil producing unit
near the WIPP site (Fig. 14). It is subdivided into three formations (descending): Bell
Canyon, Cherry Canyon, and Brushy Canyon. It was deposited basinward of the
Getaway, Goat Seep, and Capitan shelf-margin and reef complexes (Fig. 15). The
Delaware Mountain Group consists of sandstone, siltstone, shale, and minor ( < 5 %)
limestone, dolostone, and conglomerate (Harms and Williamson, 1988). In areas
adjacent to the WIPP site, production is obtained from the Cherry Canyon and Brushy
Canyon Formations with most production coming from the Brushy Canyon.
The Bell Canyon Formation, at a depth of approximately 4500 ft, has been
penetrated by most wells in the study area (Fig. Z). Most oil and gas exploratory
wells drilled in the WIPP area prior to 1965 reached total depth in the upper or
middle part of the Bell Canyon. Objectives were upper Bell Canyon sandstones.
Sandstones in this part of the section have produced prolifIcally in southern Eddy and
Lea Counties (Broadhead, 1993b; Broadhead and Speer, 1993). Notable pools in the
Bell Canyon are Paduca, El Mar, and Mason North. all of which lie near the southern
border of New Mexico with Texas (Fig. IS, see Berg, 1975, 1979; Harms and
Williamson, 1988). Many of the Bell Canyon penetrations in the WIPP area encountered
oil shows through drill-stem tests or in cores. but production has not been
established. At present. reservoir-quality sandstones in the Bell Canyon are used for
disposal of produced oil-fIeld brines in the vicinity of WIPP (Table 7). Nearest Bell