DOE Contract DE-FC26-06NT42931
|
 |
Applicant: Michigan Technological University
Principal Investigator: Dr. James R. Wood
Address: 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931
Email/telephone: jrw@mtu.edu
/ (906) 487-2894
A consortium consisting of Michigan Technological University, Western Michigan University and Jordan Development Company, LLC of Traverse City, MI propose to develop and test a new strategy to satisfy environmental restrictions that currently place large tracts of prospective Antrim Shale in the Michigan Basin off-limits to exploration and production.
The Antrim Shale in Northern Michigan has been a very prolific unconventional gas producing horizon, having yielded 2.4 Tcf to date. As the play has matured, efforts have been made by producers to extend the producing acreage into regions that are more challenging to gas development. A great deal of potentially productive shale lies within areas that are hampered to gas development due to surface constraints such as topography, wetlands, or housing. Northern Michigan has become a desired area for vacation and retirement living, resulting in high priced real estate that commingles with the fairway of the Antrim Shale play. In addition to the surficial constraints on Antrim Shale development, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) requires that 100 feet of surface casing be set into bedrock below the surficial glacial drift for all drilling. This requirement is in effect to protect groundwater resources within the glacial drift. In addition to this requirement, fracture stimulation cannot be conducted within 50 feet of the base of the surface casing string. Fracture stimulations to this date have been a vital step in improving the deliverability of wells to deem them commercial. As such, a vast amount of productive Antrim shale can neither be accessed nor completed in a conventional sense simply due to State regulations. This leaves a vast resource of domestic gas unobtainable for conventional development.
This proposal seeks funding to apply a novel drilling and completion approach
to this prolific shale play by utilizing horizontal drilling and open hole completions.
The proposed methods of drilling and completion will enable a vast amount of
undeveloped gas to be developed which would not be possible under the current
surface and regulatory constraints, while being environmentally sound in its
approach. In addition, the proposed horizontal drilling effort will be much
more efficient in producing the shale, thus requiring far fewer wells than would
be needed to drain an equivalent amount of acreage using conventionally drilled
vertical wells. As a result, the environment will be less impacted to develop
more resource. The demonstration area for this project is the Antrim Formation
in Northern Michigan that is currently off-limits due to State regulations requiring
that wells be cased within 100 of the surface. This requirement is to reduce
or eliminate contamination of groundwater and aquifers and to prevent gas leakage
to the surface. The main adverse environmental impacts are to air and water.
The impacts on the subsurface are evident, but the impact to the atmosphere
from these operations is less obvious but potentially much more damaging. Specifically,
the problem is a result of the CO2 that is co-produced with the gas (80-90%
methane, the rest mostly CO2). Our proposal addresses both of these concerns.
The State casing statute Instruction 1-94 presently eliminates much rock that
is virtually certain to be productive in the Antrim Formation. Less than 50%
of the Antrim Formation has been drilled to date, with large areas to the North
and Northwest of the heavily drilled area void of wells. This is largely due
to the restrictions in Instruction 1-94. Our proposed solution is to drill a
horizontal well offset from the target, cement and case the vertical leg as
required by the regulations, then penetrate the target with a lateral offset.