ENHANCING GAS PRODUCTION IN THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY BY APPLYING NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Since the middle of 1990's, when the majors sold all their properties in the Sacramento Valley and left, the Valley's exploration and production have been dominated by mostly small independent operators. These operators have chosen the standard path to exploration and production which is basically to lease or buy the land over and around existing production, run 3-D seismic, and drill mostly small but profitable left over plays.

Well, we are getting to the bottom of the barrel. The low hanging fruit has been picked and the next step should be experimentation with the kind of technologies which have proven themselves to be valuable in the other basins, such as horizontal drilling and fracturing.

This paper will touch on the subject of enhancing production in the Sacramento Valley using these so called unconventional methods. This author thinks a great amount of additional gas can be profitably recovered through horizontal drilling and fracturing. The challenge will be to pick the right formations and the right method of fracturing to reduce trial and error and therefore reduce the overall cost.