Riverton Dome Gas Exploration and Stimulation Technology Demonstration, Wind River Basin, Wyoming

This project will provide a full demonstration of an entirely new package of exploration technologies that will result in the discovery and development of significant new gas reserves now trapped in unconventional low-permeability reservoirs. This demonstration includes the field application of these technologies, prospect definition and well siting, and a test of this new strategy through wildcat drilling. In addition this project includes a demonstration of a new stimulation technology that will improve completion success in these unconventional low permeability reservoirs which are sensitive to drilling and completion damage. The work includes two test wells to be drilled by Snyder Oil Company on the Shoshone/Arapahoe Tribal Lands in the Wind River Basin. This basin is a foreland basin whose petroleum systems include Paleozoic and Cretaceous source beds and reservoirs which were buried, folded by Laramide compressional folding, and subsequently uplifted asymmetrically. The anomalous pressure boundary is also asymmetric, following differential uplift trends. The Institute for Energy Research has taken a unique approach to building a new exploration strategy for low-permeability gas accumulations in basins characterized by anomalously pressured, compartmentalized gas accumulations. Key to this approach is the determination and three-dimensional evaluation of the pressure boundary between normal and anomalous pressure regimes, and the detection and delineation of areas of enhanced storage capacity and deliverability below this boundary. This new exploration strategy will be demonstrated in the Riverton Dome� Emigrant Demonstration Project (RDEDP) by completing the following tasks: 1) detect and delineate the anomalous pressure boundaries, 2) delineate surface lineaments, fracture and fault distribution, spacing, and orientation through remote sensing investigations, 3) characterize the internal structure of the anomalous pressured volume in the RDEDP and determine the scale of compartmentalization using produced water chemistry, 4) define the prospects and well locations as a result on this new exploration technology, and 5) utilize new completion techniques that will minimize formation damage and optimize production