Pangaea Geochemical Technologies
1999 KTEC Grant - Red Top Program
Gas Exploration
Kiowa County, Kansas

Background:  This Kiowa County, Kansas lease was contributed to the Red Top program in September 1999. This project has confirmed the interpretation model for gas projects. A Mississippi dolomite gas test was intended for the SESENW of Section 24 and the pits had been dug when Pangaea conducted a 26 point K-series gas-sieve, light hydrocarbon, soil vapor geochemical survey.

A good Mississippi gas well was producing from NWNWSE of Section 24 and the geochemical signature at that location was intended to be a model for evaluating the remainder of the acreage.  It was assumed that the Mississippi gas was the only potential gas target.

Results:  Map 1 depicts the total hydrocarbon isoconcentration map (ethane concentration + propane concentration + butane concentration in ug/L of soil vapor). Generally, higher total hydrocarbons suggest where there is natural gas in a subsurface reservoir.

Map 2 shows the ethane concentration/propane concentration, a unitless number. Generally, this ratio shows where the light hydrocarbons emanating from the subsurface have a similar composition.

Interpretation of Survey Results:  The total hydrocarbon map was scanned for the sample locations with the highest readings. These locations were compared to the ratio map and it was discovered that the higher hydrocarbon locations were associated with the lower ratio values. Higher total hydrocarbon value were obtained at the producing Mississippi well and trending near it and to the southeast. Ratios in this part of the study area ranged from 0.9-1.5 and indicate that the light hydrocarbons emanating from this area have about as much propane as ethane. This area is interpreted to be the best Mississippi reservoir in the study area and GV-17 is the best possible location for a Mississippi test. Mississippi gas has high concentrations of ethane, propane and butane causing the ratio of ethane/propane to be close to 1.0. Contours between GV-17 and GV-13 narrow. This may indicate that they are narrowly connected or constricted by reservoir parameters such as permeability.

The area with ratios of 1.5-2.8 has a very different soil vapor composition and prior to drilling of GV-6, it was suggested that if gas was encountered here, it would not be Mississippi gas.

The well at GV-6 was drilled and, in fact, the Mississippi was not developed.  An upper zone, not commonly produced in this area, was developed and 200 MCFG was tested from this zone.  Pipe was set and the well is soon to be completed. Interestingly, the gas from this new zone is a lower quality BTU gas.  It's analysis yielded 730 BTU, 29% nitrogen, 68% methane, 1.2% ethane, 0.5 % propane and 0.2% butane.   Its ethane/propane ratio is 2.4.  This value corresponds well with the ratio value on the geochemistry map at that location.  The ratio map suggests that this newly discovered gas likely extends to the northwest and since the total hydrocarbons to the northwest are increasing over the GV-6 well, this new zone may actually improve in that direction. There may be some areas where the upper gas-bearing zone and the Mississippi gas zone overlap.  An example of where this might occur is at location GV-2 and GV-19 where the ratio value are midway between the compositional extremes of the two areas of the project.

One caution on the interpretation of the northwest area would be that a small "stinker” oil well was abandoned somewhere along the north line of this quarter after production of 2000 BO.  Its location would need to be established and its information integrated into the interpretation of the geochemistry data in this part of the study area.

As a result of what was learned from this project, Pangaea is implementing the analysis of methane on all gas projects. It has not been included in the analytical suite because some methane is always produced in soil by the action of bacteria and results in noise in the methane data.  This additional analysis should allow two areas on the same project to be better compared for gas production.  Even though the geochemistry data clearly defined that the gas in the new well would be compositionally different from the Mississippi well, it did not strongly suggest that the new well would produce economic quantities of gas.  Once methane is analyzed for, that too can be used to compare areas and predict the productivity of the low BTU gas area.

Even though low BTU gas is not a common target for exploration, developing a field of this gas could prove economically beneficial because it can be mixed with higher BTU gas in the area, increasing the total flow in the pipeline, and allowing it to be a marketable commodity.