The WolfBone is an unconventional oil resource in the southern Delaware Basin (Figure 1). Exploration and development has been a systematic evolution from geologic concept to drilling, production, evaluation and revision of targets. Originally exploration focused on Wolfcamp sandstone reservoirs below and Third Bone Spring sandstone reservoirs above to current focus on the 1,000' thick, oil-rich, unconvential Wolfcamp shale (Figure 2).
Resource Composition and Deposition:
The Wolfcamp is a heterogeneous resource consisting of quartz, carbonate and kerogen (Figure 3 and 4). The geologic and economic sweet spot is limited to the mid-proximal basin floor on the gently-dipping western flank (Figure 5). In this setting quartz and kerogen accumulated in the quiet deep-basin interrupted by episodic deposition of shelf to basin floor carbonate and slope to basin floor quartz-rich debris flows that settled basin ward of the slope to basin floor de-acceleration boundary. These depositional processes resulted in compositional and grain-size heterogeneities and accumulation of the thick organic-rich, technically and economically exploitable targets.
URTeC 1581854
