Spacing of Wells in the Long Beach Field

Abstract

The spacing of wells in Long Beach oil field has caused much discussion fromthe earliest days of its development, on account of the closely drilledtown-lot areas which have been as intensively developed as any productive areasin the world. The purpose of this paper is to present the results obtained fromthis type of development in comparison with the more widely spaced developmentin this field, now that a sufficient length of productive life has elapsed. Theintensity of development in Long Beach is indicated by the fact that up toSept. 1, 1929, there were 1736 wells either drilled or drilling. Of these 165 failed to get production and 121 were drilling. Thus 1450 wells have producedoil from an area of 1350 acres. Up to July 1, 1929, these wells produced atotal of 355,047,913 barrels. Method Pursued Four groups of offset areas were chosen, in each group the wells in one areaare widely spaced and in the other, closely spaced. The areas in each group arecontiguous and the groups are spread over the field from the southeast end tothe northwest, so that representative data are assured. The comparison has alsobeen extended to shallow and deep zones, like zones in their respective areasbeing compared. Even though these productive zones are very thick, a fair picture of results isobtained, because the drilling of the wells in the two types of areas wasconcurrent in the different groups and, as a rule, the thickness of sand openedup at anyone time was about the same. As deeper sands were found, wells inoffset areas were deepened or new ones were drilled in both types of areas. Thedivision of zones was made in the same manner in contiguous areas. The total cumulative production up to July 1, 1929, of the wells in theirrespective zones in each area was obtained. From these figures were computedthe recovery per well, recovery per acre, acreage per well, and the ratios ofthese factors. Thus July 1, 1929, is the end of the period considered in allareas.