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Energy Resources
Published in Dexter Perkins, Kevin R. Henke, Adam C. Simon, Lance D. Yarbrough, Earth Materials, 2019
Dexter Perkins, Kevin R. Henke, Adam C. Simon, Lance D. Yarbrough
The best petroleum production occurs if reservoirs are large and reservoir rocks have both high porosity (so they hold large amounts of hydrocarbons) and high permeability (so hydrocarbons may be extracted easily). Production from such reservoirs is much more easily accomplished than production from tight formations. Very productive oil wells may produce hundreds or even thousands of barrels a day, although such high productivity does not persist indefinitely. Less productive wells, called stripper wells, produce no more than 15 barrels per day.
Measurements show that marginal wells are a disproportionate source of methane relative to production
Published in Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 2020
Jacob A. Deighton, Amy Townsend-Small, Sarah J. Sturmer, Jacob Hoschouer, Laura Heldman
A marginally producing or “stripper” well is defined by the Internal Revenue Service as a well that produces less than 15 barrels of oil equivalent or less than 90,000 cubic feet (90 MCF) of natural gas per day (Internal Revenue Service 2019; US Energy Information Administration 2018). Over 695,000 of the 872,000 active oil and gas wells in the United States are marginally producing (US Energy Information Administration 2018). In 2015, 11% of the United States’ natural gas and 10% of the United States’ oil came from marginal wells (US Energy Information Administration 2018). Federal and state tax incentives for marginal wells are designed to help keep these wells in production, particularly when prices drop below a certain threshold (Potter et al. 2017). Before the onset of hydraulic fracturing, marginal wells were the dominant source of domestic oil in many regions of the United States.