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AAPG Bulletin

Abstract

AAPG Bulletin, V. 109, No. 12 (December 2025), P. 1465-1474.

Copyright ©2025. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.

DOI: 10.1306/09172523122

The rebirth of the Leduc-Woodbend Nisku oil pool in Alberta, Canada

Mengwei Zhao,1 and David Tian2

1HC Exploration Ltd, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; [email protected]
2MAGA Energy Ltd, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Horizontal drilling has led to the rebirth of the Leduc-Woodbend Nisku oil pool and substantial economic returns. The original vertical-well development produced 91.4 MMBO (14.5 MMm3) in 64 yr, whereas horizontal-well development has produced 17 MMBO (2.7 MMm3) of oil in the past 12 yr and will produce at least 41.5–51.9 MMBO (6.6–8.3 MMm3) in the future starting in 2024. It is projected that the oil pool is destined to be a hundred-year-producing pool and could produce until at least 2075. In recent years, the pool has been generating more than $100 million of revenue annually and yielding free cash flow. This operational and economic success indicates that certain tight conventional oil pools like the Nisku pool contain recoverable oil reserves, which cannot be fully developed by vertical wells and still possess significant room for horizontal drilling development. The Nisku reservoir possesses low porosity, ranging mainly Previous HitbetweenNext Hit 1% and 6% with an arithmetic mean of 2.9%, and low permeability, ranging mainly Previous HitbetweenTop 0.1 and 100 md with an arithmetic mean of 6.8 md. If other oil-field operators thoroughly review the sedimentary settings, lithofacies, and especially petrophysical parameters in their old oil pools developed only by vertical wells and compare them with those in this pool, they could determine whether their oil pools still have potential for horizontal drilling before they will be, or even after they have been, abandoned.

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