Possibilities of Secondary Recovery for the Oklahoma City Wilcox Sand

Abstract

The Oklahoma City Wilcox sand, discovered on March 26, 1930, has produced394 million barrels of crude oil and 819 billion cubic feet of natural gas asof July 1, 1941. The 100,000 bbl. wells, pressures of 2600 lb. per sq. in., andflows of "Wilcox" sand caused exciting moments in the early life of thefield. Today the reservoir is substantially at atmospheric pressure andproduces 75,000 bbl. of crude oil daily through 466 pumping wells. Earlyestimates of the initial crude-oil content of the "Wilcox" sandindicated that about 600 million barrels of crude oil would remain after thepumping wells ceased to produce economically. The Oklahoma City WilcoxSecondary Recovery Association was organized in March 1939, to study thepossibilities of recovering a portion of this oil.Only a very brief summary of the information available can be presented in apaper of this nature. Some simplifications and generalizations are necessary togive the over-all picture in so short a space and statements made may not applyto a specific well or small area. Since the area under consideration by theAssociation is that north of the south line of section 22–11–3, someinformation will be presented for areas A, B, C, 1, 2, 3 and part of 4 of Fig.2, and some will be for the entire Wilcox zone west of the fault.This paper is essentially an abstract of an engineering report made by A. D.Small, B. T. Murphree, M. C. Sons and the author for the Oklahoma City WilcoxSecondary Recovery Association on Sept. 5, 1940. Some information is taken froma report to the Association by C. V. Sidwell on March 1, 1940, and some dataare from a recent report by A. D. Small. It gives a brief history of the Wilcoxzone, estimates of the initial oil contents of the reservoir, presentconditions in the reservoir, and probable results from several programs of"secondary recovery."