Revitalizing a mature oil play: Strategies for finding and producing unrecovered oil in Frio fluvial-deltaic reservoirs of South Texas. Technical progress report, January 1--March 31, 1996

Advanced reservoir characterization techniques are being applied to selected reservoirs in the Frio Fluvial-Deltaic Sandstone (Vicksburg Fault Zone) trend of South Texas in order to maximize the economic producibility of resources in this mature oil play. This project is developing interwell-scale geological facies models and assessing engineering attributes of Frio fluvial-deltaic reservoirs in selected fields in order to characterize reservoir architecture, flow-unit boundaries, and the controls that these factors exert on the location and volume of unrecovered mobile and residual oil. The goals of the Industrial Associates program that is the source of industry cofunding to this project are to (1) develop an understanding of sandstone architecture and permeability structure in a spectrum of fluvial-deltaic reservoirs deposited in high- to low-accommodation settings and (2) translate this understanding into more realistic, geologically constrained reservoir models to maximize recovery of hydrocarbons. Project work during the first quarter of 1996 consisted of Phase 3 tasks related to the transfer of technologies to industry. The two primary vehicles for transferring technologies evaluated in the Frio Fluvial-Deltaic Sandstone play (Vicksburg Fault Zone) are a series of two short courses and a microcomputer-based geologic advisor software program. In Rincon field, a three-dimensional (3-D) reservoir model is being constructed to more accurately calculate remaining volumes, and work during the first quarter focused on a sensitivity analysis of varying model parameters