Trenton limestone potential in Ohio?

While doing research on the utica I have discovered the Trenton limestone that is below the utica. This was the most important oil bearing formation at one time in Ohio and actually started the oil industry in the 1800s. My question is: what is the future potential of the trenton limestone using horizontal drilling? We should be looking into this as a possible new source of income from leasing and royalties.

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Permalink Reply by Brian Day on February 23, 2012 at 4:10am

I'll toss in my two tarnished pennies on what i have learned about the Trenton/Blackriver over the last few years. 

My first and perhaps most important comment is that you should strive very hard to get horizon pugh clauses in your leases.  If the gascos want it all to the senter of the Earth, they should have seperate payments for layers beneath the Utica as you go down.  i would not trust a lawyer who has already decided how far the gascos will negotiate.  We had those wonderful "experts" here in Central Pa. advising landowners to just take whatever the gascos offered and be happy.  It turns out, most of those "experts" had pretty lucrative leases quite different from the standard lease offered and they had a heads up to purchase more land before the boom.

In Central Pa, the BR/T was the gas and oil bearing layer that we were told the gascos were after.  Some very good wells had been drilled across the border in New York in the BR/T.  We were told the Marcellus really wasn't of great interest immediately, but might be of interest many years in the future.  The BR/T is sporadic in oil and gas producing locations here in NY and Pa, not a uniform layer like the Marcellus andthe Utica.  yes, the layer of limestone called BR/T is uniform, but the oil and gas is created when faulting occurs and other minerals come up from beneath and interact with the limestone.  As i recall from my readings quite some time ago, salt brine comes up from beneath and changes or replaces the limestone with dolomite, creating the pore space to trap the oil and gas.  Now any of you geologists out there please chime in and correctme on any of this laymen's explanation.  the oli and gas appear in pockets around these fault areas.  Geologists believe that other structures within the BR/T besides faults may also create traps for oil and gas, but those structures are not proven yet.

Traps in the BR/T are often long, narrow strips due to their relation to faulting.  Gascos do drill down and go horizontal across the strip to get maximum contact with the formation.

Now I am probably way incorrect on some of this, so do your own research please.  In my opinion, the gascos stung us pretty good here in Central Pa.  They got the Marcellus and perhaps the Utica in the future pretty cheap on the guise of being after the BR/T.  In truth, they may someday drill the BR/T here when they are done with the Marcellus and Utica, but that will probably not be in my lifetime.  If I can inform any of you in Ohio in any way and maybe put a litle thorn in the landmen and "expert's" sides there with my blather, I will spend some time at the keyboard.  After all, they could always offer me more money to shut up.  In the last three or four years the Gascos have taught me to curb my ethics.  That is the way they play the game and that is the way a land owner must learn to play it too.  Good luck!

Permalink Reply by Billy Park Whyde on February 23, 2012 at 5:34am

Jodi can you spot the wells you mention on the KMZ files BICS made up for Google Earth?  If so you can transfer it to a photo image and post. 

Permalink Reply by oildude on February 24, 2012 at 11:21pm

JODI

Is that a vertical well or horizontal? I mean the one drilled in 1992.

Permalink Reply by oildude on February 24, 2012 at 11:26pm

Brian

Any ideas about how a landowner could determine if his land is on a " sweet spot" in the BR/T. I suspect well records from close by wells may be of some use. 

Permalink Reply by Jack Straw on March 18, 2012 at 1:04pm

RE:"As i recall from my readings quite some time ago, salt brine comes up from beneath and changes or replaces the limestone with dolomite, creating the pore space to trap the oil and gas.  Now any of you geologists out there please chime in and correctme on any of this laymen's explanation.  the oli and gas appear in pockets around these fault areas." 

 

From: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/168366/dolomitization

"dolomitization, process by which limestone is altered into dolomite; when limestone comes into contact with magnesium-rich water, the mineral dolomite, calcium and magnesium carbonate, CaMg(CO3)2, replaces the calcite (calcium carbonate, CaCO3) in the rock, volume for volume. Dolomitization involves recrystallization on a large scale. The dolomite mineral grains often show distinct faces, are of more or less uniform size throughout, and are larger than the calcite crystals in the limestone. When the recrystallization is not complete, the dolomite crystals are scattered throughout a calcite matrix. Sometimes rocks are formed that show patches of dolomite mottling the limestone where the magnesium-rich waters are thought to have filtered through the rock; such mottling does not appear to be controlled by bedding structures, however, and thus may be a product of the unmixing (separation) from a crystalline mixture containing calcium and magnesium carbonates of magnesium carbonate, which then forms dolomite.

In the process of dolomitization the dolomite crystals cut across original calcite grains, fossils, and oölites (spherical modules of calcite) and sometimes include quartz grains within their boundaries. Dolomites do not preserve the textures of the original limestone nor the fossils therein. Sometimes the only evidence that the limestone was formed from grains of older rocks is scattered quartz grains. Fossils are uncommon in dolomites but sometimes remain as faint shadows outlining the original shape without showing internal detail or as molds with poor detail and filled with tiny dolomite crystals."

The volume of dolomite is less than that of calcite, alteration of calcite to dolomite in a rock volume increases the pore space in the rock; this alteration from calcite (limestone) to dolomite results in an increase in porosity (of up to an additional 13%).

This diagenesis (at depth) provides needed porosity and permeability, allowing a "vessel" (trap) into which oil and/or natural gas can migrate (and be sucessfully produced.

 

JS

Permalink Reply by HB on March 19, 2012 at 4:15am

Jack, good to hear from you again after a bit of a hiatus.  Very interesting post.  Thanks.

Permalink Reply by Billy Park Whyde on February 26, 2012 at 7:50am

Interesting  upon a ROSE RUN well see http://dnr.state.oh.us/mineral/oil/mrmimages/CD405/I26/0000025761.tif I wonder what this would have looked like in a horizontal well?

Permalink Reply by oildude on February 26, 2012 at 3:01pm

I had read on another discussion thread that some vertical drillers were trying to lease the rose run now. Does anyone else remember that?

Permalink Reply by Billy Park Whyde on February 26, 2012 at 3:50pm

 If they are I think its a ploy. 

Permalink Reply by oildude on February 27, 2012 at 1:48am

Billy

You may be right. The rose run is under everything else so it may be a way to take everything from the rose run to the surface. Those are some sneaky bastards. The first guy that came into my area to lease land was telling us that they needed everything because they needed the coal bed methane to cool down the natural gas before it came out of the ground. It was all lies.

Permalink Reply by JR on February 27, 2013 at 3:19pm
I have a Mac...thinking its not compatible...and sadly we are leased to center of earth thanks to 1960! But thankful for owning our mineral rights so we'll roll with it. I frankly find this s$@t fascinating!
Permalink Reply by JR on February 27, 2013 at 12:59pm
I think I did I right...most are in northwest OH?

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