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AAPG Bulletin, V.
Appleton field
case study (eastern Gulf coastal plain): Field development model for Upper
Jurassic microbial reef reservoirs associated with paleotopographic basement
structures (E & P Notes)
Ernest A. Mancini,1 D. Joe Benson,2 Bruce S. Hart,3 Robert S. Balch,4 William C. Parcell,5 Brian J.
Panetta6
1Department of Geological Sciences and Center for Sedimentary
Basin Studies, Box 870338, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 34587–0338;
email: [email protected]
2Department of Geological Sciences and Center for Sedimentary Basin Studies,
Box 870338, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 34587–0338; email: [email protected]
3New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, New Mexico 87801;
email: [email protected]
4New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, New Mexico 87801
5Department of Geological Sciences and Center for Sedimentary Basin Studies,
Box 870338, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 34587–0338; email: [email protected]
6Department of Geological Sciences and Center for Sedimentary Basin Studies,
Box 870338, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 34587–0338; email: [email protected]
AUTHORS
Ernest A. Mancini is professor of geology in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alabama, where he also serves as director of the Center for Sedimentary Basin Studies, an interdisciplinary petroleum research center, and as director of the Eastern Gulf Region of the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council, the primary technology transfer organization for the petroleum industry in the region. He is a former state geologist and oil and gas supervisor for the state of Alabama.
Joe Benson received his B.A. degree from the College of Wooster
and his M.S. degree and Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. From 1973 until 1978 he
was a geologist with the Lake Erie Section of the Ohio Geological Survey. In 1978 he
joined the Department of Geology at the University of Alabama, where he is presently
professor of geology and associate dean for science and mathematics in the College of Arts
and Sciences. His research focuses on the depositional and diagenetic history of
carbonates with emphasis on controls on 
reservoir
evolution and quality.
Bruce Hart was a petroleum geologist at the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources when this work was conducted. He is currently assistant professor with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at McGill University. He has taught short courses on three-dimensional seismic interpretation for SEPM, GSA, PTTC, and other organizations. His research focuses on integrating three-dimensional seismic methods with other approaches to understand subsurface physical properties and to address fundamental problems in stratigraphy and structural geology.
Robert Balch is a research associate in the Reservoir Evaluation
and Advanced Computational Technologies Group of the Petroleum Recovery Research Center at
the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. His current research interests are
primarily in the field of reservoir characterization using artificial intelligence tools
such as fuzzy logic and neural networks. He has a B.S. degree from Evergreen State College
and an M.S. degree and Ph.D. in geophysics from New Mexico Tech.
William Parcell is currently a doctoral candidate at the
University of Alabama. His primary research interests are carbonate sequence stratigraphy
and stratigraphic modeling. He received his B.S. degree (1994) from the University of the
South, Sewanee, Tennessee, and his M.S. degree (1997) from the University of Delaware. He
has worked on facies analysis of Middle Jurassic carbonates in Montana and Wyoming and
controls on the distribution of Upper Jurassic reefs in the United States Gulf Coast,
France, and Portugal.
Brian Panetta received a B.S. degree (1992) in geology from the University of South Carolina and a M.S. degree (1995) in geology from the University of Kentucky. Since 1997 he has worked as a staff geologist for the Center for Sedimentary Basin Studies at the University of Alabama, where he is also pursuing his Ph.D. His research is focused on three-dimensional modeling of petroleum reservoirs.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was funded, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Department of
Energy's EPSCoR program to the University of Alabama. The three-dimensional geologic
visualization modeling was accomplished using software provided by Landmark Graphics
Corporation. Seismic studies undertaken at the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral
Resources were funded by the Advanced Reservoir Management Project of Los Alamos National
Laboratory, using software provided by Landmark Graphics Corporation and GX-Technology
Corporation.
ABSTRACT
Appleton oil field, located in Escambia County, Alabama, was
discovered in 1983 through the use of two-dimensional seismic reflection data. The field
structure is a northwest-southeast–trending paleotopographic ridge comprised of local
paleohighs. The field produces from microbial reef boundstones and shoal grainstones and
packstones of the Upper Jurassic Smackover Formation. Because Appleton field is
approaching abandonment, owing to reduced profitability, an integrated geoscientific study
of the field structure and reservoir was undertaken to determine whether drilling
additional wells in the field would extend the productive life of the reservoir. The
conclusion from the integrated study, which included advanced carbonate reservoir
characterization, three-dimensional geologic visualization modeling, seismic forward
modeling, porosity distribution analysis, and field production analysis, was that a
sidetrack well drilled on the western paleohigh should result in improved oil recovery
from the field. The sidetrack well was drilled and penetrated porous Smackover reservoir
near the crest of the western paleohigh. The well tested 136 bbl oil/day.
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