[RealJoe]

I am on an Yahoo energy investment group and they just got a post from a company called Energy Capital Group. These people are involved in oil and gas production and have a technology called radical jet enhancement, which they claim will greatly enhance oil production from dying and depleted wells. The web link is:
www.encapgroup.com

I don't have much understanding of the structures of petroleum basins and drilling technology in general. Wonder how this compares with other enhancement technologies like water, steam and CO2 injection methods.

Will this technology actually retrieve more of the inaccessible petroleum resources in a basin, thereby increasing the amount of provable oil reserves? Or will it just produce the accessible oil quickly, just depleting the existing reserves faster and producing no net gain in reserves?

[RonMN]

Interesting. I'm not a scientist but it does seem like it's allowing access to oil deposits that were not recoverable before. Not that this will be able to replace 83 MBPD but every little bit helps.

[RealJoe]

I have been interested in the potential of methanegenic archaea to eat and decompose heavy hydrocarbons into methane for some time. This emerging biotechnology may be one of the ways to extend natural gas resources far into the future. One research company in the process of developing this biotechnology is Luca Technologies. Their web site is: www.lucatechnologies.com.
At some point, I will post some informative posts on the theads already created on this subject.

Here my interest is different. I am interested in finding out how to buy plugged oil wells in depleted oil fields. The heavy, inaccessible hydrocarbons in these wells are - if they haven't been poisoned by air (oxygen) injections - frequently perfect ecosystems for these methanegenic archaea species. The high temperatures, injected brinewater and plentiful hydrocarbons in these sandstone formations provide great habitat for the archaea to grow, reproduce and produce methane.

Since many of these depleted oil fields in the US are also close to natural gas pipelines, it seems like immense fortunes are waiting to be made applying this emerging biotechnology. So I am interested in finding out how to buy depleted oil wells, particularly in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. The trouble is I cannot find any information on how to buy a depleted well, who generally owns them, who sells them or what the environmental restrictions are. This seems strange, because what happens to the land that depleted oil wells are on. Once they are plugged, do they just revert to being farms and ranches or evolve into subdivisions?

I have actually searched through many of the main petroleum industry online journals and databases with little to show for my efforts. Of course, I can try more complex searches, but am wondering if some of the petroleum industry people on this forum have any advice or directions. Do you?

[pip]

I can’t be of much help to you. I do live in the middle of a lot of depleted oil fields in Texas, and my farm has 4 oil wells that haven’t been produced in 15 years. 3 of the 4 wells still have the pump jacks on them rusting away, and as far as I know are still owned by Huber Oil which was the original producer.

I’ve seen ads in farm publications usually saying something like “mineral rights wanted producing or not”. You might call one of these guys. If they’re buying they’re probably selling too.

[rockdoc123]

First off the residual oil in abandoned wells is not necessarily heavy..in fact it is unlikely to be so in most of the fields in the US. The problem generally is wells are abandoned because the water cut is so high that hydrocarbon recovery is uneconomic or the field is seriously underpressured. There are ways to get around these deficiencies, hence the advent of stripper wells, but that is not always possible.
I think you need to make sure you have a very good understanding of why a particular well has been abandoned, how it has been abandoned and when it was abandoned and by who before you ever embark on such experimentation.
One thing you certainly better become familiar with is the Superfund Act. Under these regulations you assume all environmental liabilities for any well in your possession, whether you had anything to do with it or not. Many old wells were poorly abandoned...sometimes casing corrodes and leaks. All you need is crossflow of a saltwater aquifer into a fresh water acquifer or seepage of hydrocarbons at surface to find yourself in a situation that could cost you a lot of money to fix.
That being said you will only be able to buy wells from fields that have been completely abandoned. The various states are in charge of licensing regs but normally you would have to acquire a lease around that well through a bidding procedure...often an auction.
Familiarize yourself with the governing bodies in each state and then read the regs throughly. Otherwise what you want to do is fraught with danger.