Statutory Unitization: The Engineering Aspects of An Energy Recovery Measure
Authors: Russell James E. , Hoglund Forrest E. , Dutton Granville 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 47th Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers held in San Antonio, Tex., Oct. 8–11, 1972. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by who the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

Faced with a U. S. energy demand that will nearly double by 1985, the petroleum industry must utilize all opportunities to add domestic reserves. Some 429 billion barrels of oil-in-place have been discovered in the United States of which only 31 percent will be recovered under current percent will be recovered under current operations. The unrecovered oil is a challenging target for both secondary and tertiary recovery methods, the most efficient of which require unitized operations. Unitization assistance laws are an effective means of insuring that recovery technology is applied timely enough to maximize reservoir recovery. These laws have also provided the means for State regulatory agencies to fulfill their dual obligations of protecting correlative rights and preventing waste.

Twenty-eight states have statutes where unitization can be made effective after approval of a significant majority of those involved; however, almost 60 percent of the Nation's oil resources currently considered unrecoverable are not subject to such statutes. This paper summarizes the major provisions of these statutes with emphasis provisions of these statutes with emphasis on their engineering requirements. Significant features which make these regulations effective are identified and problem areas discussed. The applications of these statutes are described with particular attention given to the areas in which statutory unitization is most frequently criticized.

Introduction

There has never been a greater need to improve the recovery from U. S. oil and gas fields. To accomplish this, significant achievements will have to be made in additional recovery technology and in the economic and regulatory areas. In the regulatory area, effective methods for unitizing reservoirs are needed so that technology can be fully and effectively applied. Currently there are 28 states with laws designed to assist unit formation. Generally these statutes have been effective in helping units to be formed when compared with states that do not have similar laws. However, many of these laws were passed a number of years ago under different conditions and are not as effective as they could be. Also, almost 60 percent of the currently unrecoverable oil in the U. S. is in areas where there is no unitization assistance legislation.