Description
Whiting Oil and Gas began injection of CO2 into the first phase of the North Ward Estes field CO2 project in May of this year. Full implementation of the project is expected to take over 5 years and will eventually include over 16,000 acres.
The North Ward Estes Field is one of the giants in West Texas covering 58,000 acres in Ward and Winkler counties with over 1.0 billion barrels of oil in-place. The field was discovered in 1929 by Gulf Oil. Since discovery, over 3,000 wells have been added. A successful waterflood was implemented in 1955.
The current CO2 project is the second tertiary recovery effort implemented at the North Ward Estes field. The first CO2 flooding project was initiated in 1989 and covered over 3,800 acres. The results of the project were mixed and the flood was terminated in 1998.
The current project is being implemented with state-of-the-art operating practices and facilities and it is hoped that recovery from the project can be improved over the original CO2 flood.