Ridgeway Arizona Oil Corp. has big plans to produce 350 million cubic feet (MMcfpd) of carbon dioxide daily from the St. John's area of east central Arizona and pipe it to the Permian basin of New Mexico and Texas to use it for enhanced oil recovery. Ridgeway is the operating arm of Enhanced Oil Resources of Houston.
The Commission on Friday approved permits for Ridgeway to drill 3 horizontal wells in the St. John's field. These are the first horizontal wells ever drilled in Arizona.
Barry Portman, drilling operations manager for Ridgeway, briefed the Arizona Oil and Gas Commission yesterday in Phoenix on the company's plans. [above: Ridgeway's map of the St. John CO2 field extent and land ownership]
Ridgeway has 11 wells this year in various stages of drilling, testing, or completion and plans 6 more. After that, Portman says they will focus more on analyzing the results.
Their goal is to document "proved undeveloped reserves" of 2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of CO2, which is what they say it will take to justify building a pipeline to move the CO2 to the Permian basin. That would supply the pipeline for 15 years. An earlier report indicated the St John's field contains 15 Tcf of CO2 in place, although only a portion of that is expected to be producible.