Feasibility study of heavy oil recovery in the Midcontinent region (Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma)

Abstract

This report is one of a series of publications assessing the feasibility/constraints of increasing domestic heavy oil production. Each report covers a select area of the United States. The Midcontinent (Kansas, Nssouri, Oklahoma) has produced significant oil, but contrary to early reports, the area does not contain the huge volumes of heavy oil that, along with the development of steam and in situ combustion as oil production technologies, sparked the area`s oil boom of the 1960s. Recovery of this heavy oil has proven economically unfeasible for most operators due to the geology of the formations rather than the technology applied to recover the oil. The geology of the southern Midcontinent, as well as results of field projects using thermal enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) methods to produce the heavy oil, was examined based on analysis of data from secondary sources. Analysis of the performance of these projects showed that the technology recovered additional heavy oil above what was produced from primary production from the consolidated, compartmentalized, fluvial dominated deltaic sandstone formations in the Cherokee and Forest City basins. The only projects producing significant economic and environmentally acceptable heavy oil in the Midcontinent are in higher permeability, unconsolidated or friable, thick sands such as those found in south-central Oklahoma. There are domestic heavy oil reservoirs in other sedimentary basins that are in younger formations, are less consolidated, have higher permeability and can be economically produced with current TEOR technology. Heavy oil production from the carbonates of central and wester Kansas has not been adequately tested, but oil production is anticipated to remain low. Significant expansion of Midcontinent heavy oil production is not anticipated because the economics of oil production and processing are not favorable.