American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2017 - 120

Oil, Gas Looking Up In Volunteer State
Editor's Note: The Tennessee Oil &
Gas Association has provided the following article.

KNOXVILLE, TN.-The 46th Annual
Tennessee Oil and Gas Association Convention featured encouraging news about
the state's prospective development. The
two-day convention, held May 15-16,
covered a wide range of topics and provided a ray of hope to Tennessee's oil
and gas producers.
The good news for Tennessee may be
best illustrated by the increase in applications for permits to drill during the
first five months of 2017. According to
data from the Tennessee Department of
Environment and Conservation, the state
has issued 93 percent more permits compared with the same period in 2016.
"Things are looking up for oil and
gas in Tennessee," assessed TOGA President Chuck Laine. "Just like our neighbors
here in Gatlinburg, Tn., that survived the
horrific fires last fall, TOGA's members
also have weathered the storm."
Muddy Boot Award
TOGA's annual Muddy Boot Award
celebrated one member company with a
long history of drilling wells in the state
and always getting the job done, no matter
what. Jerry and Vickie Carr, owners of
Tennessee Rotary Drilling, were honored
with a pair of worn out work boots that
were bronzed and mounted on a plaque
to recognize their willingness to get their
boots dirty in pursuit of success.
In his acceptance speech, Jerry commented on Vickie's value, especially in
their early years, when she was his partner
on the rig. In her acceptance remarks,

Vickie thanked the many operators who
had hired them to drill and offered special
thanks to the convention's presenting sponsor, Hornet Corporation, for its continued
support during the past several years.
"We couldn't be happier to present
Jerry and Vickie with this prestigious
award," Laine affirmed. "Their dedication
to the industry and the association throughout the years is commendable."

Productive Sessions
Throughout the convention, attendees
heard from a variety of speakers, including
two that presented possible keys to more
productive and successful wells.
Bill Goodwin of W.D. Goodwin Inc.
told participants that more hydraulic fracturing sand may be the key to bigger
Monteagle and Ft. Payne wells in Tennessee. "We need to go to school on
what is happening in the Eagle Ford
Shale play," Goodwin advised. "Operators
there realized that more sand in fracs
meant more oil production. There are as
many as 1,000 truckloads of sand in a
10,000 ft. horizontal.
"Our producing formation is similar
to the Eagle Ford, so we need to use as
many as three truckloads of sand for a
vertical well with a 30-foot pay section,"
he added. "Through the years, very few
Tennessee wells have been fracced with
sand. And then, only a small amount."
In Indiana, he pointed out, operators
use large amounts of sand to fracture a
limestone reservoir with characteristics
similar to those in Tennessee. Those
$100,000 treatments are yielding wells
that produce 100 barrels a day, he indicated. "Based on what is happening in
Indiana, we should be able to do a $60,000

TOGA Past President
and Director Jim
Washburn (left) congratulates Jerry and
Vickie Carr, owners of
Tennessee Rotary
Drilling, recipients of
TOGA's 2017 Muddy
Boot Award. TOGA
says the award recognizes their willingness
to get their boots dirty
in pursuit of success.

120 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

frac and make a 30 bbl/d well and we are
planning to try," Goodwin said.
He also noted that Tennessee's typical
limestone wells show 23,000-65,000 barrels
of producible reserves in primary recovery,
but most of them make only 5,000 barrels
in the first 5 five years and then average
between 1 bbl/d and 1 barrel a week indefinitely thereafter. "We have tried to squeeze
more oil out of our rocks with chemicals,
nitrogen, carbon dioxide and short laterals,
with little success," he described. "We need
to keep trying old and new ideas.
"Tennessee remains among the least
expensive states in which to explore and
produce. We just need to try to make it
even better," he concluded.
In a presentation titled "Success and
Failures of Horizontal Wells in Tennessee
and Why," Champ Oil Company geologist
Scott Gilbert said 76 horizontal wells
had been drilled in Tennessee and demonstrated widely varying outcomes.
He noted that the horizontal gas wells
drilled in the Chattanooga Shale had
proven more successful than the limited
number of oil wells drilled in the Fort
Payne formation.
"What we have learned is, generally
speaking, to get good production out of a
horizontal shale well, you need longer
laterals, more frac stages, larger fracs,
and to drill them in areas of magnetic
lows," he advised.
He mentioned the example of a horizontal well for Champ Oil Company, the
total cost of which was $1 million for a
4,000-5,000 foot lateral with 22 stages
and 1 million cubic feet of nitrogen per
stage.
Regulatory Issues
Michael Burton, supervisor of the
TDEC Oil and Gas Program, presented
"The Battle of the Bond," which chronicled
the agency's struggles to handle all Tennessee's abandoned wells. Before 1986,
Burton said, operators could post a $10,000
blanket bond for an unlimited number of
wells. Two years later, regulators instituted
a $1,500 bond for individual wells and
limited the blanket bonds to 10 wells.
"Research conducted in 1998 indicated
there were approximately 4,500 abandoned
wells in the state," Burton reported. "At
that point, we became much more aggressive in plugging the wells and were
moving at a solid pace."
However, during tough financial times,
the state legislature raided $1.4 million of
the $2.2 million plugging fund to balance
Tennessee's budget, he recalled. Although
American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2017

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