Beaver Creek Field, Fremont County, Wyoming: ABSTRACT

Abstract

The Beaver Creek field is located in Fremont County, Wyoming, approximately 14 miles southeast End_Page 532------------------------------ of the town of Riverton, Wyoming, and 5 miles northwest of the Big Sand Draw field. Geologically, the field is on the east side of south-extending tributary embayment of the Wind River basin. The Beaver Creek anticline was mapped in detail and leased by the Midwest Refining Company in 1930, on the supposition that structural closure might increase in Cretaceous sediments beneath the unconformity at the base of the gently folded Tertiary Wind River formation. This idea was substantiated by later refraction and reflection seismograph work. Operation of the Midwest Refining Company Beaver Creek leases was assumed by the Stanolind Oil and Gas Company following its organization in 1932. In 1938, the Stanolind completed the discovery well, the Johnson No. 1, as a 9,000-MCFPD gas well in the Lakota sandstone, following plug-back from total depth of 8,992 feet in the Nugget sandstone. Problems in production and marketing delayed further development until 1945. From 1945 to the present, drilling activity has been dependent on demand for additional gas and development of new oil-producing zones. Total daily field production is 120,000 MCF gas from the Frontier, Muddy, and Lakota sandstones, and 2,100 barrels of 38°-45° gravity oil from the Mesaverde and Tensleep sandstones and the Madison limestone. A recent deep field wildcat, which bottomed at 13,462 feet in granite wash, failed to find productive oil or gas in the Cambrian. End_of_Article - Last_Page 533------------