Pinedale on the Web!
Pinedale, Wyoming
Home | Calendar of Events | Photo Gallery | Local Businesses |

Jonah Field The Jonah Field began in the 1990s in a desert area that previously was just used for cattle grazing, measured in acres per cow. Safety Meeting Before going onto any rig site, visitors must put on a flame retardant jump suit and wear a hard hat, safety glasses, ear plugs, foot protection, and listen to a safety briefing from Chris House, EnCana Jonah Field Production Coordinator. Drill rig "We are all extremely proud of our rigs," said Encana GIS Analyst Randal Phillips from the Denver office. "I challenge if we didn't have the best fleet of rigs in the United States." The tour visited Ensign drill rig #129 which had Schlumberger subcontractors onsite doing drilling work. Rig tour Drill Bits Drill bits are tungsten cutters with diamond insets attached. They can weigh between 75-250 pounds each. One bit can cost as much as $48,000. Sometimes they can be refurbished and reused, but often the company is lucky to drill one well without destroying at least one bit. Old and new drill bits Dog House Rick Felker explains the monitors and controls in the "dog house". Burner The NPL field will be a contrast to the Jonah Field utilizing much more modern and efficient technology. Equipment in the Jonah is being upgraded as time progresses to reduce air emissions and modernize the equipment.

Encana Oil & Gas USA, Inc. gave a tour of their operations in the Jonah natural gas field and their proposed NPL field on Wednesday, August 31st. The purpose was to give members of the public an opportunity to see their current operations and the proposed new gas field. Company representatives were on hand to answer questions.

Encana is a natural gas exploration and development company from Canada that has significant operations in North America. They operate in a number of North America's shale and tight gas resource plays in Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana and Canada. In Wyoming, they hold approximately 80% of the gas leases in the Jonah Natural Gas Field located approximately 32 miles south of Pinedale and 65 miles north of Rock Springs.

The Jonah Field
Located south of Pinedale, Wyoming, the Jonah Field is the earliest natural gas field in the Upper Green River Basin in Sublette County. It is estimated to contain 10.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The resource is on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The presence of natural gas in and around Sublette County was known for years, but it was not deemed practical to extract. The principal technical challenge in Jonah was and is identification and stimulation of productive intervals in a 3,000 ft to 3,500 ft section of stacked lenticular fluvial sand/silt/shale sequences which include the Upper Mesaverde, Lance, and Unnamed Tertiary formations. The formation is bounded by two faults which create a wedge shape for the formation underground.

The Jonah Field took off after McMurry Oil proved the field viable after drilling wells and using the hydraulic fracturing process to open (stimulate) the tight sand formations that exist more than a mile and a half underground, which allows gas to be recovered at economic rates.

Jonah Field is known for being one of the largest on-shore natural gas discoveries in the USA in the early 1990s. It is one of Encana’s key resource plays. In 2010, Encana drilled approximately 112 net wells in their Jonah operations. According to Encana, productive area of Jonah is approximately 18,100 acres - just under one township in size. Encana owns approximately 80% of the lease rights in the Jonah Field.

The life of the Jonah Field is estimated to be from 40 to 60 years. The drilling program is winding down with only 300 - 400 wells left to drill in Jonah. The existing wells should produce for another 30 to 40 years, at a declining rate. Encana is looking to adjacent land for a new gas field for their activities.

NPL
The Normally Pressured Lance (NPL) region encompasses 141,080 acres immediately south and west of the existing Jonah Field. Encana currently holds mineral leases on more than 70 percent of this area. The field is called "normally pressured" because the gas flows at pressure rates deemed normal for the depth at which the gas occurs, as opposed to the nearby Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline where the gas is over pressure than typically occurs at those depths.

The NPL is outside of the geologic formation, a wedge-shape bounded by two faults, which encompasses the Jonah Field. NPL wells aren’t quite as good as those found in the Jonah, but they are still economically attractive enough to go after as a new gas play. Encana will use a directional drilling technology strategy learned from the nearby Pinedale Anticline gas field, rather than all straight vertical drilling, to minimize their surface footprint and environmental impacts.

Long-term development plans for the proposed NPL includes a maximum of 3,500 wells to be drilled over 10 years to produce natural gas from the Lance Pool, Unnamed Tertiary and Mesa Verde formations.

Encana filed their Notice of Intent on April 12, 2011. The Scoping Period for public comment ended on May 12, 2011. Presently, Encana is in the process of preparing a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). Once that is available, hopefully next spring, there will be another 45-day public comment period. Those comments will be included and considered in the Final EIS. Encana hopes to begin operations in the NPL in 2013.
Source: http://www.encana.com/operations/activities/npl/docs/npl-fact-sheet.pdf

If approved and successful, the NPL project will provide continuous steady jobs as drilling in Jonah winds down. This would allow Encana operational planning and development, and Wyoming communities would be able to keep steady jobs and tax revenues, Encana says. Entry-level jobs typically start at around $24/hour. Experienced rig hands can make $32/hour or more, said Rick Felker, who works with the Encana in the Jonah Field Simops (simultaneous operations) Completion activities.

The NPL will utilize several of the operational lessons learned from the Jonah and nearby Pinedale Anticline fields:

- Directional drilling to consolidate numerous wells onto a single well pad which minimizes surface impacts.
- Utilization of a closed-loop, three-phase underground gathering system to ship gas, water and condensate to centralized processing facilities located in the gas field. This significantly reduces truck traffic through, and in and out of the gas field. Efforts to reduce truck traffic are estimated to have eliminated 1 million truck trips a year in the Jonah Field in Encana’s operations.
- Utilization of an on-site workforce housing facility, commonly referred to as a "man camp" for their employees, sub-contractors and company associates.
- 24-hour/day drilling and simultaneous operations to reduce the time it takes to drill and complete a well.
- Electrification of the gas field. The large natural gas operators are working with Pacific Power and the BLM to bring in electric lines to run power to all the facilities in the gas field, which should significantly improve air quality from gas field equipment.

Safety, Safety, Safety
Encana Natural Gas company representatives stress that safety is their #1 priority in all their operations. They have a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, alcohol or firearms. They built a work force facility adjacent to the gas field to house their employees and subcontractors. No dogs are allowed in the Jonah. "Safety isn’t just a priority," said Chris House, EnCana Jonah Field Production Coordinator, "it is one of our core values." Visitors going on the gas-field tour had to listen to a safety talk, then don fire-retardant jump suits, put "clinkers" on their shoes, and wear hardhats and safety glasses. All participants had to sign a Safety and Environmental Briefing document after the safety talk before they were allowed to go on the Jonah tour. It was explained that even cell phones and cameras can be potentially dangerous because they could interfere with radio communications between operations at the site by accidentally accepting or sending transmissions of onsite drilling, fracturing or completion equipment.

For more information about Encana’s operations in the Jonah Field or NPL, please contact:
Randy Phillips, Encana NPL EIS Project Manager
720-876-3692
Paul Ulrich, Encana NPL EIS Project Lead
(720) 876-3554
Randy Teeuwen, Encana Public & Community Relations Advisor
720-876-5468

Related Links NPL Fact Sheet (PDF) www.encana.com - Encana Oil & Gas USA, Inc. www.ensignusd.com - Ensign United States Drilling Inc. www.slb.com - Schlumberger