Examination of Old Oil and Gas Field Properties that May influence Methane Concentration in Overlying Wilcox Aquifer in Northwestern Louisiana

摘要

A number of other studies tend to indicate that current oil and gas development has significant impacts on methane concentration in overlying aquifers. However, in northwest Louisiana (southern Bossier, southern Caddo, and northern DeSoto parishes) the Wilcox Aquifer appears to be impacted mainly by methane released from underlying oil and gas plays of certain fields. For six fields (Bethany-Longstreet, Caspiana, Elm Grove, Greenwood-Waskom, Holly, and Sligo) in the study area, comparisons between fields yield significant differences of methane concentration between first to second ranked field, second to third ranked field, fourth and fifth ranked field, and fifth and sixth ranked field in terms of methane concentrations. Methane concentration is the water quality parameter of overlying Wilcox Aquifer that appears to be the most sensitive to which old oil gas field that is under it For this study a number of oil and gas field properties are examined to determine which could possibly be causing these differences. The properties considered are:density of oil and gas wells, both total and those spudded prior to 1970, depth of fields developed, depth of older versus total wells, total production of dry natural gas, and density of production of natural gas.