ENHANCED RECOVERY UNITS AND PRESSURE MAINTENANCE

• Jurisdiction: United States

Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Pooling and Unitization II
(Jan 1990)
CHAPTER 18B
ENHANCED RECOVERY UNITS AND PRESSURE MAINTENANCE
G. L. Kutchins
W.A. Moncrief, Jr.
Casper, Wyoming

These comments will outline principally the working interest/operators' committee functions in the establishment of a Secondary Unit. I'll not go into the benefits to be gained of secondary unitization or the procedures to follow in obtaining unit approval but I want to briefly discuss the various types of Secondary Units. There are three (3) types of Secondary of Enhanced Recovery Units.

The most common is the Standard Federal Secondary Recovery Form of Unit Agreement which is utilized when 10% or more of the unit allocation and/or acres are Federal and is regulated by the BLM. In the proceedings of the 29th Annual Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Institute of 1984 at page 787 it states that "the regulations and form of agreement for (federal) secondary recovery units have been in the mill for years but have yet to be published." I have a copy of the USGS July 18, 1980 Draft Manual Release entitled 645.2 — Unitization — Secondary Recovery. As you are probably aware, the USGS Conservation Division Manual 645.1 published in 1976 covers Federal Exploratory Unitization and was later updated by the BLM in 1984 as Handbook 3180-1. Throughout the 1960's and 1970's there were "suggested procedures for formulating a federal secondary recovery unit agreement" written by the USGS. The CDM 645.2 has never been released and I do not know the status of BLM's Handbook 3180-2. Therefore, there are no regulations governing the Federal Secondary Recovery Unit and the unit agreement document and guidelines used to this date are that only — guidelines and not regulations.

The second type of secondary recovery unit is a State form which is regulated by State authorities. These units usually comprise Federal unit allocation and/or acres of zero to 10 percent.

The third type is the API form which comprises primarily private lease ownership and is also regulated by the State. The latter two types of secondary units are usually "joined in" or "ratified" by the federal authorized officer thereby committing the federal royalty to the unit.

Keep in mind that full fledged secondary recovery operations can take place under Section 10 (Plan of Further Development and Operation) of the standard Federal exploratory unit. In these cases, all participation is based on 100% surface acres under the Participating Area.

[Page 18B-2]

The secondary recovery or enhanced recovery or pressure maintenance or fieldwide producing unit is a unit comprising usually all the lands that are productive or reasonably proved to be productive at the time of its formation. Normally, only the producing formation or formations are unitized. Such units are formed for the purpose of commencing some type of improved recovery operations, ie: injection of water and/or gas or a miscible phase. Recent tertiary recovery by CO injection has been very successful. God only knows what the next enhanced recovery mechanism will be. Whatever the methods used in...