American Oil and Gas Reporter - PBIOS 2014 Official Program Guide - 168

Permian Basin Reports
and adding surface facilities.
"We are injecting approximately 1
Bcf/d of CO2," he reveals. "About 160
million cubic feet a day is fresh CO2 off
the pipeline, while the rest comes from
our NGL processing facility and is recycled. We have one of the largest EOR
compression/processing facilities in the
country with just under 300,000 electric
horsepower on the ground. This is an example of big fields getting bigger. It is
amazing how SACROC continues to respond."
Ricketson, who notes that oil prices
were $20 a barrel when Kinder Morgan
began developing the SACROC Unit,
says the new technology of horizontal
drilling and hydraulic fracturing that unlocked the nation's unconventional plays
is being employed now in SACROC, too.
"In the last couple years, we have
started using 6,000-foot laterals with 20
frac stages," he reports. "The industry
figured out how to do it well and bring
down the cost, which benefits us all."
Yates Unit
Kinder Morgan's 26,000-acre Yates
Unit, located 90 miles south of Midland
in Pecos County, is one of the largest oil
fields ever discovered. "It was discovered
in 1926 and has an impressive amount of
history," Ricketson states. "It has had a

vast array of technology used in it over
the years. But it is different from
SACROC; it is not a miscible flood. In
the Yates Unit, the CO2 stays in the gas,
so we are injecting CO2 into the gas cap
to speed gravity drainage."
Kinder Morgan then targets the oil
column with horizontal drilling, using
1,500- to 1,700-foot laterals with no hydraulic fracturing, Ricketson continues.
When the company acquired the Yates
Field in 2003, the unit was making 16,00017,000 bbl/d. He says that grew to a peak
of 30,000 bbl/d, but has since dropped to
approximately 20,000 bbl/d. He says
Kinder Morgan is injecting 95 MMcf/d
of CO2 off the pipeline and is recycling
400 MMcf/d.
Ricketson says Kinder Morgan also
has a pilot program testing hydrocarbon
miscible (HCM) technology in the Yates
Unit that involves injecting NGLs in the
gas cap. He says it may be the first such
test in the Permian Basin. "The most
likely completion strategy will be to use
horizontal technology to capture and deliver the NGLs," Ricketson outlines. "We
will recycle the NGLs and then sell the
oil. We expect it will be another six
months before we have an understanding
to get to the commercial phase using the
HCM process."
He estimates there is a target of ap-

The SACROC Unit in Scurry County, Tx., is one of the largest and oldest oil fields in the
United States using carbon dioxide flooding. The 56,000-acre field was making 8,100 barrels of oil a day when Kinder Morgan acquired it in 2000. Kinder Morgan immediately
raised production by 30,000 bbl/d, and today the field is producing 32,500 bbl/d oil as
well as 20,000 bbl/d of natural gas liquids.

168 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

proximately 1.5 billion barrels in the
Yates Unit gas cap, although Kinder Morgan has yet to determine how much can
be recovered using HCM technology.
"I started working in the Yates Field
in 1992, and there is not a day goes by
that I don't learn something new," he
marvels, noting Yates production comes
from the highly fractured San Andres
zone located at the tip of the Central
Basin Platform.
Katz And ROZ
Kinder Morgan's third CO2 EOR project is the Katz Strawn Unit, located in
the northeast corner of Stonewall County,
Tx., and includes portions of Haskell,
Knox and King counties.
"We built a 90-mile pipeline extension
east from the SACROC Unit and started
injecting in 2010, so we have been flooding
the Katz Unit for almost four years,"
Ricketson observes. "When we started,
the Katz Unit was almost depleted, making
less than 200 bbl/d. We have pushed it
more than 4,000 bbl/d and we expect it
to peak around 7,000 bbl/d."
He describes the Katz Unit as similar
to the SACROC, only much smaller.
Kinder Morgan is injecting 70 MMcf/d
of CO2 into the Katz Field. When completed, Ricketson says Katz will have
only 44 five-spot patterns, but 75 percent
of the wellbores are new drills.
"The Katz Unit has an estimated 170
million barrels of oil in place, compared
with the SACROC Unit, which has approximately 3 billion barrels in place,"
he points out.
When Kinder Morgan looks for a potential CO2 EOR project, it is looking for
a good waterflood and enough oil in
place to support the investment.
"Katz had all the right conditions,
plus its proximity to SACROC made it
possible," Ricketson notes.
Kinder Morgan's most recent CO2
EOR acquisition is the Goldsmith Landreth
San Andres Unit, which it purchased in
June 2013, Ricketson goes on. He says
the 6,166-acre project in Ector County,
Tx., is unique in that its previous owner,
Legado Resources, was flooding both the
main pay and the residual oil zone, below
the oil/water contact. He says Kinder
Morgan is continuing that effort, injecting
55 MMcf/d of fresh CO2. The unit is

American Oil and Gas Reporter - PBIOS 2014 Official Program Guide

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