WotW - Enough with the Devonian Clastics.

This Petro Ninja - Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week focuses on the Slave Point, the next rung on our climb up through the discoveries related to the Peace River Arch. The Slave Point is a reefal carbonate complex along the fringe of the Peace River Arch and is often in the shadow of the Swan Hills, its more prolific equivalent, which developed along the West Alberta Ridge.

Beaverhill Lake schematic cross section showing relationship of Slave Point and Swan Hills to the Peace River Arch - Oldale et al. (1994)

As an aside, if you asked me what I enjoy most about putting together these posts, it would be how the research involved challenges my preconceptions, which has the effect of making me a better geologist. As an example, I would have sworn on a stack of fossils that the Swan Hills was discovered prior to the Slave Point.

Slave Point type log - Oldale et al. (1994)

Swan Hills type log - Oldale et al. (1994)

But then the reality is that 100/16-25-080-17W5/00, the Dawson Slave Point discovery well, was spudded over a year prior to the Swan Hills Carson Creek discovery well at 100/13-12-061-12W5/00. And it is easy to see why a feature as imposing as the Peace River Arch might have drawn the attraction of earlier explorers of the WCSB.

Exploring for Slave Point oil was, in its day, pretty enticing. The 100/10-07-087-14W5/00 well is forecast to produce close to 3 million barrels of oil by the time it is done.

Production forecast courtesy of Subsurface Dynamics

References

Oldale, H.S., Munday, R. J., Ma, K. and Meijer Drees, N. C. (1994): Devonian Beaverhill Lake Group 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, URL https://ags.aer.ca/publications/chapter-12-devonian-woodbend-winterburn-strata.html, [04/26/2020].