Well of the Week – The first resource play with legs

This is the fifth Well of the Week post in a series describing how Resource Plays (basin-wide plays in which hydrocarbons are the continuous phase) have long been key drivers of the Canadian oil and gas industry.  Links to the previous articles may be found at the base of the article.

Resource Play: Pembina Cardium

Discovery Well UWI: 100/04-16-048-08W5/00

Drilling/Completion Technology: Conventional Rotary/Perforation and Fractured

In 1947, Imperial Oil drilled Leduc No. 1 and kicked off the modern Canadian Oil and Gas industry. Ten years later, after a chance to fully come to grips with this Devonian reef play, the Alberta Association of Petroleum Geologists (forbearer of the current Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists) held a symposium on not the Leduc, but on a Cretaceous sandstone! But not just any sandstone. This conference was all about the Cardium. In 1953, Socony – Mobil drilled Socony Seaboard No. 1, the Pembina Cardium discovery well (100/04-16-048-08W6/00). And of all the Resource Plays we have reviewed so far, this is the first to be drilled with conventional rotary table drilling as opposed to a cable tool rig.

Raster logs courtesy of Petro Ninja

Nielsen et al., 1957

Although the pay section is a lot thinner than the Leduc and Nisku, it is shallower, and as a Resource Play more widespread, pervasively hydrocarbon saturated and over pressured.

Nielsen et al., 1957

As a result, the Cardium stacks up well to the Nisku – Leduc Giants with regards the level of established initial reserves. The Cardium represents 10.8 % of the WCSB oil and 2.4% of the WCSB gas endowment versus 23.8% and 9.1% in the Nisku/Leduc (Hay, 1994).

As with other Resource Plays, the Cardium wells display long-lived, low decline production profiles as shown in the 4-16 production plot, which covers nearly 60 years.

Chart courtesy of Subsurface Dynamics

As the discovery timeline illustrates, the Cardium was neither the first oil well or the first Resource Play in western Canada. But it was the first of many to be developed on a massive scale. We will focus on the plays which followed this trailblazer in upcoming posts.

Western Canada Discovery Timeline to the Cardium

Previous Posts

August 12, 2021 Well of the Week – The first gas well in Western Canada

August 19, 2021 Well of the Week – first oil well in Western Canada

August 26, 2021 Well of the Week – second oil discovery – second oil resource play

September 2. 2021 Well of the Week – Bitumount: The start of something big

A.R. Nielsen, F.R. Michaelis, H.K. Roessingh and W.D. MacDonald. Cardium Symposium. Journal of the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists, Vol. 5 (1957), No. 4.

P.W. Hay, 1994. Chapter 32 – Oil and Gas Resources of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin; in Geological Atlas of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, G.D. Mossop and I. Shetsen (comp.), Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists and Alberta Research Council. https://ags.aer.ca/atlas-the-western-canada-sedimentary-basin/chapter-32-oil-and-gas-resources