A Reservoir Engineering Study of Compartmentalization of the Lavacca Bay Field, Calhoun County, TX

by
Donni Jokowiyanto, M.S.E.

University of Texas at Austin, 1995
Supervisor: Mark A. Miller

The Lavaca Bay field is located in Calhoun County on the central Texas Gulf Coast. The State of Texas owns over 2,500 acres of the field's 3500 productive acres. Since its discovery in 2964, the field has produced 82.7 Bscf of gas from 41 production wells. Production comes from the Downdip Frio Barrier/Strandplain Sandstone of the San Marcos Arch play. The field consists of multiple stacked sandstone units resulting in complex reservoir compartments of each depositional unit. The Railroad Commission of Texas designates 22 separate reservoirs in the field, although there may in fact be many more hydrodynamic compartments. Only one of the reservoirs produces oil.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the compartmentalization of the Lavacca Bay field through reservoir engineering analysis methods. The work was intended to support geological characterization studies conducted by the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology to determine potential locations for remaining gas reserves in untapped and/or poorly produced compartments. Reservoir engineering studies primarily focused on analyzing the pressure history of each well in the field. No studies of this sort have been reported on the field. Results obtained in this study were compared with the reservoir characterization study and pointed out some important potential differences.

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