Recent developments related to petroleum engineering discussed in this paperare:

  1. Drilling wells in with oil or the use of chemical compounds or "mudsolvents" for removing rotary mud from wells in order to increase or makepossible oil production.

  2. Comparison of results of electrical logging methods in locating water, asshown in a recent test on a well in the Los Angeles Basin.

  3. A new method for logging formations through casing, known as the Stratagraph.

Drilling Wells In With Oil or the use of Chemical Compounds or MudSolvents

During the time that the California fields showed high gas pressures, thepressure of the gas within the formation was sufficiently great to break downthe mud wall or cake formed while the well was drilling. That this did notalways occur was demonstrated by the fact that in some of the older fields newwells sometimes had substantially higher initial productions than other wellsnear by. The explanation seemed to be that some sands were mudded off in theoriginal drilling. Their pressure was then not great enough to break down themud wall in competition with the higher pressure of the sands, but thesituation reversed itself so that a later well benefited by the pressure inthese originally weaker sands. As time passed, in wells deeper than 5000 ft.the difficulty of bringing wells on production became more pronounced. This ledto a hunt for substitutes, of which a number have been tried. The one that hasproved most successful in our experience at Ventura is known as the Nabssolvent.

At well No.1 of the Associated-Ventura Land &Water Co. when it wasrecompleted in February 1936, about 10 days were spent in trying to bring thewell in in the regular manner, but only about 113 bbl. of water could beswabbed from the well, and even this quantity decreased as time passed.

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