Improving the Availability and Delivery of Critical Information for Tight Gas Resource Development in the Appalachian Basin

Abstract

To encourage, facilitate and accelerate the development of tight gas reservoirs in the Appalachian basin, the geological surveys in Pennsylvania and West Virginia collected widely dispersed data on five gas plays and formatted these data into a large database that can be accessed by individual well or by play. The database and delivery system that were developed can be applied to any of the 30 gas plays that have been defined in the basin, but for this project, data compilation was restricted to the following: the Mississippian-Devonian Berea/Murrysville sandstone play and the Upper Devonian Venango, Bradford and Elk sandstone plays in Pennsylvania and West Virginia; and the "Clinton"/Medina sandstone play in northwestern Pennsylvania. In addition, some data were collected on the Tuscarora Sandstone play in West Virginia, which is the lateral equivalent of the Medina Sandstone in Pennsylvania.Modern geophysical logs are the most common and cost-effective tools for evaluating reservoirs. Therefore, all of the well logs in the libraries of the two surveys from wells that had penetrated the key plays were scanned, generating nearly 75,000 scanned e-log files from more than 40,000 wells. A standard file-naming convention for scanned logs was developed, which includes the well API number, log curve type(s) scanned, and the availability of log analyses or half-scale logs.In addition to well logs, other types of documents were scanned, including core data (descriptions, analyses, porosity-permeability cross-plots), figures from relevant chapters of the Atlas of Major Appalachian Gas Plays, selected figures from survey publications, and information from unpublished reports and student theses and dissertations. Monthly and annual production data from 1979 to 2007 for West Virginia wells in these plays are available as well. The final database also includes digitized logs from more than 800 wells, sample descriptions from more than 550 wells, more than 600 digital photos in 1-foot intervals from 11 cores, and approximately 260 references for these plays.A primary objective of the research was to make data and information available free to producers through an on-line data delivery model designed for public access on the Internet. The web-based application that was developed utilizes ESRI's ArcIMS GIS software to deliver both well-based and play-based data that are searchable through useroriginated queries, and allows interactive regional geographic and geologic mapping that is play-based. System tools help users develop their customized spatial queries.A link also has been provided to the West Virginia Geological Survey's "pipeline" system for accessing all available well-specific data for more than 140,000 wells in West Virginia. However, only well-specific queries by API number are permitted at this time.The comprehensive project web site (http://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/atg) resides on West Virginia Geological Survey's servers and links are provided from the Pennsylvania Geological Survey and Appalachian Oil and Natu...

Regional stratigraphic framework of the Tuscarora Sandstone: A model for geologic CO2 storage in West Virginia

“…Play outline, fields, pools and location of inert gases in the Tuscarora gas play (Modified fromBehling et al, 2008) …”