Paper: CONVENTIONAL AND UNCONVENTIONAL RESOURCE EVALUATION IN THE SOUTHEAST NEW MEXICO OLD AND NEW PLAYS

The work described in this paper was performed in conjunction with a contract from the U.S, Bureau of Land Management, Pecos District to estimate oil and gas development in southeastern New Mexico for the next 20 years. This district covers the bulk of the Permian Basin in New Mexico, and contains numerous oil and gas reservoirs. Producing oil and gas fields of the region were divided into 27 plays, based upon similarities such as depositional environment, lithology, tectonic history, and trapping mechanisms. The approach relied heavily on
the work of Broadhead (2004) but expanded into reservoirs not covered in that study. Plays were analysed based on key factors such as geology, development histories, pool-wide production histories and trends, and the impacts of market demand, price, regulatory change, and impacts of changing technologies. Conventional resource potential of the Ellenburger play and unconventional resource potential of the Woodford Shale play are presented as samples of this work.