Engineering And Legal Problems In Town Lot Secondary Recovery
Authors: Morton Harold C. 
Published: December 2007

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Introduction

We are confronted with a problem which presents now, and will continue to present, a tremendous challenge to engineers, lawyers and management.

As a lawyer of many years experience in oil problems and oil litigation, as well as having been a halfway engineer on many occasions in order to partially understand the problems in particular industry litigation, this subject matter and its obvious problems have been of great interest to me.

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE PROBLEM

By definition, "town lot" signifies multiple ownership, small parcels, close spacing and an overdrilled area, usually interspersed with larger parcels.

In some 18 oilfields [a list is attached to this paper] where town lot drilling has existed, in some instances almost all of the oil has come from the town lot area, while in others the town lot production has formed a substantial part of the field. These 18 are all located in Southern California.

These fields have had an oil recovery to date, and of course most of it primary, of 3.5 billion bbl oil. These fields have had more than 14,500 wells drilled during their past history, 5,500 of which have been abandoned, 1,600 are idle, and 7,400 are still producing.

Some of these by comparison will seem to be insignificant insofar as receiving attention of engineers and management when compared to others.

For example, the ancient city of Los Angeles field, discovered in 1890, still produces 200 B/D from 80 wells, some 70 years after discovery. This is hardly to be compared with Long Beach where 830 million bbl have been produced., and 13,000 B/D are still being produced from more than 1,000 wells. Much of Long Beach production [Signal Hill] has been from what we can term "town lot" areas, which are so situated with respect to the acreage parcels as to necessitate over-all consideration. The acreage parcels have been so closely drilled that the whole of Signal Hill can readily be classified as "town lot".

PROBLEMS FOR ENGINEERS

If 3.5 billion bbl of primary recovery has been had from these town lot areas, what has been left for secondary recovery?