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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Special Volumes
Abstract
2004. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
Discovery of Jonah Field, Sublette County, Wyoming1
J. W. Robinson
Consultant, Littleton, Colorado, U.S.A.
1This article is reprinted with the permission of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists. This article first appeared in The Mountain Geologists, v. 37, p. 135–143.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank John W. Martin and Mick McMurry for filling in the blanks on the McMurry portion of this chapter. John Melby supplied information on Davis Oil Company and events leading up to drilling the Wardell well. Doug Battin provided information on the activity of Home Petroleum and is generally considered to be responsible for the discovery of the field. Greg Anderson provided information on the actions of Presidio Oil. An earlier draft of this manuscript was reviewed by Jane Estes-Jackson, Mark Kirschbaum, and Michele Bishop. I appreciate their comments and suggestions.
ABSTRACT
Home Petroleum Corporation drilled two wells in 1986 and 1987 to test the concept of a large, basin-centered gas accumulation in the Upper Cretaceous Lance Formation in a remote portion of the northern Green River basin. Although these first wells had excellent shows of gas and calculated log pay, the reservoir sandstones had extremely low permeability. Unfortunately for Home, fracture-stimulation techniques used in the late 1980s were unable to unlock this vast gas resource. In 1991, John Martin at McMurry Oil Company recognized the potential of the play and quietly amassed a controlling interest in the area. McMurry Oil and their partners brought the appropriate drilling and completion technology into the project, an effort that resulted in the 
rediscovery
of Jonah field. Jonah field will ultimately have more than 350 producing wells and is poised to become the next multi-tcf gas field in the Rocky Mountain region. The rediscovery of Jonah field ignited interest in structurally trapped, tight-gas exploration in Upper Cretaceous strata and may stand as an analog for further exploration of vast, sparsely drilled areas of the Rocky Mountain region.
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