Thermal and Mass History of Fairway Field in East Texas

Abstract

Fairway Field is an oil field operated by Hunt Oil Company located in East Texas near the town of Poynor, Texas in Henderson County. The field was discovered in 1960 and is still producing today with the field life projected beyond 2015 (Webster et al., 2008). Hunt Oil Company granted access to over 2,900 open-hole well logs and pressure surveys for this research project. This thermal and mass history of production from a major hydrocarbon field is an especially rare opportunity, as oil and gas companies in Texas are generally not required to share pressure survey data with regulatory agencies, and thus these types of data are not typically available to the research community. This data set, coupled with fluid production and injection data, provides an opportunity to analyze temperature variations associated with fluid migration and field development as a function of time. Given the fact that the field has been in development for over 50 years, and has exhibited an unexpected increase in reservoir temperatures (+20 °F), Fairway Field illustrates that sedimentary basins have considerable potential for geothermal development. An increased availability of pressure survey temperature data and fluid data from oil and gas companies provides a better understanding of such dynamic geothermal systems, helps evaluate the working life of a field, and is a tool for assessing development risk associated with future geothermal energy development in such sedimentary basins.