Montana oil and mining journal. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1931-1953, 1936-09-05

A revolution has occurred in Kelvin
Sunburst field that is important to every
operator, every landowner and every
royalty owner. This field has produced
approximately forty million barrels of
oil, but i'm the words of Captain Horny
THAT rs ONLY THE BEGINNING"
It is safe to make the statement that
the value of Kevin-Sunburst acreage has
DOUBLED as a result of the revolution
in drilling and producing methods. The
profit to the operator is more than
doubled. The profit to the landowner
is doubled-perhaps trebIed.
The chief factor is ACIDTZATION. The
person who does not realize the import
ance of this revolutionary production
method cannot possibly understand this
field any more than he could while
Gordon Campbell was drilling the first
well.
We now know that HUNDREDS of wells
drilled and abandoned as dry holes
would be producers today, had the
science of acid been known I'm 1923. We
know that the production of the field
to date would have been two or three
times as great: instead of 100000
barrels, IL would have produced SO,OOO,OO0
or perhaps 12O,O0O,OOO barrels, from
the same number of wells.
Not all wells in the field have been
cd the average increase I'm production
has been -FOUR HUNDRED PER GENT.
Wells that never made more than 10
barrels, in initial production, have been
made to produce 50 barrels per day by
use OF acid. Wells that have been pro-
ducing for is years have been made to
yield more oil per day than they did In
flush production.
WHY? Also HOW?
We all know that Kevin-Sunburst is a
gigantic uplift: tremendous force in
the center OF the earth has been for ages
pushing upward at this point until a
hundred Thousand acres is pushed up so
it resembles the roof of a vast silo.
The upper layers of this dome are soft,
pIiabIe shales. These shales have been
bent upward highest at the point of great
est pressure, which is in the GAS Ridge"
district. They slope away in all direc-
lions, like the shingles on a circular roof.
Beneath these bent shales is the massive
limestone of the great ocean of Missis-
sippian age-an ocean bottom of ages
past 1t is 900 feet thick in Kevin-Sun-
burst.
While the shales bend, limestone is
brittle and win not bend. 1t win, instead,
crumple and shatter. So vast was the
area of pressure that the lime was not
cut in two and thrust upward, as in the
mountains, but it bent like cardboard
and cracked and broke: SHATTERED is
the better word.
From the lower source materials, prob
ably the Devonian, came oil, seeking es-
cape. 1t crept upward through the my
riads of cracks and seams in the broken
lime, arriving at the top of the lime to
find a soft porous material which had
formed as the sea receded and the ocean
bed became a dusty, barren plain. In
a succeeding dry or swamp period, the
limestone wore away in ordinary erosion.
In some PLACES it was swept bare; In
other places it collected several feet OF
broken lime which we sometimes call
sand" when we find it today.
Travelling upward, still seeking escape,
the oil occasionally gets up through
cracks in am 8O-f0ot black limestone laid
down by the next sea OF the Jurassac age,
bat when it encounters the CretaceOus
shaIes--soft, gumb0 shales-it is deRin-
iteIy halted and most of the OH remains
in the cracks, seams and porous portions
of the lime. Thus oil is found I'm two
horizons I'm Kevin-Sunburst: the top OF
the Madison lime and in the Sunburst
sand.
Under old drilling methods, a six-inch
hole was bored through the shales TO
the top Of the lime. The white lime"