A study published by the Utah Geological Survey highlights the Beehive State’s “plays” in major oil production. Here are some of the study’s findings, courtesy of geology.utah.gov.:
Utah oil fields have produced over 1.36 billion barrels since production began in the 1940s. Although production declined from the mid-1980s to 2002, when it reached a 40-year low, the trend has since reversed. Among oil-producing states, Utah currently ranks well above average in domestic oil production. There are over 200 active oil fields in Utah.
Despite over 40 years of production at rates that have varied by a factor of three, Utah’s proven oil reserves during this time have remained above 200 million barrels, indicating significant oil remains to be produced. The UGS study discussed how to continue finding those resources.
Among them are tectonic setting; reservoir stratigraphy, thickness and rock types (lithology); type of oil traps; rock properties; oil and gas chemical and physical characteristics; source rocks, including timing of generation and migration of oil; exploration and production history; case-study oil field evaluations; summaries of the state-of-the-art current and potential best drilling, completion and production practices, and potential for new secondary/tertiary enhanced oil recovery; descriptions of reservoir outcrop analogs for each play; exploration potential and trends; and maps of the major oil plays and subplays.
In the Uinta Basin, the current production practices in several oil plays are geared to recover significant amounts of oil in older wells. Special cased-hole well logs help to identify by-passed oil in individual beds (40 or more in many wells). These beds are then stimulated to recover additional oil.
Utah has numerous production-scale outcrop analogs that provide an excellent view of reservoir properties, environment of deposition, and lateral and vertical changes in these characteristics for each oil play. They can be used as a “template” for evaluation of data from rock cores taken from wells, geophysical well logs, and seismic surveys, and the development of reservoir models for field development.