Oil Production from the Elk Point Group

Oil production from the Elk Point Group is primarily derived from pinnacle reefs in northwest Alberta and from basal sands in central Alberta. No Elk Point oil production occurs in British Columbia, and only minor production in southeast Saskatchewan.

There are eighteen Elk Point oil fields with Initial Established Recoverable Oil Reserves of over 1 x 10⁶m³ (6 MMBbls). The ten largest Elk Point oil fields, listed in order of Initial Established Recoverable Reserves, are shown in Table 1. Cumulative production data include figures released to the end of 1990.

Table 1. Ten Largest Elk Point Oil Fields (in units of 10⁶m³).

**Initial Established**
No.	Field	Formation	No. of Pools	Marketable Reserves	In-place Volume	Cumulative Production	Discovery Year
1	Rainbow	Keg River	134	116.7	219.7	86.2	1965
2	Nipisi	Gilwood	20	62.7	129.6	46.9	1964
3	Mitsue	Gilwood	3	61.4	123.4	48.6	1964
4	Rainbow South	Keg River	32	17.5	45.7	11.0	1965
5	Zama	Keg River	255	17.4	85.1	12.9	1966
6	Utikuma Lake	Keg R. Sand	30	12.3	32.3	9.4	1963
7	Virgo	Keg River	165	8.9	48.4	6.7	1967
8	Red Earth	Granite Wash	79	8.5	37.5	5.6	1956
9	Shekilie	Keg River	94	5.3	33.9	2.7	1969
10	Evi	Granite Wash	30	4.2	15.3	1.8	1979

Five of these ten largest Elk Point oil fields occur in Keg River pinnacle reefs in the Rainbow, Zama and Shekilie evaporite basins of northwest Alberta. The remaining five occur in Gilwood - Granite Wash basal sands of central Alberta. Recent Elk Point oil production has been found in the Panny-Senex area of north-central Alberta and in the Tableland area of southeastern Saskatchewan. All Elk Point oil fields contain light to medium gravity oil.

Total recoverable oil reserves in the Elk Point are estimated at 339 x 10⁶m³ of which 240 x 10⁶m³ have already been produced. Initial Established In-Place Volume of Elk Point oil reserves totals 898 x 10⁶m³. Many of the total 1229 Elk Point oil pools are small, with an average 276 x 10³m³ recoverable oil reserves/pool.

Table 2 lists the distribution of Elk Point oil reserves according to In-Place Pool Size.

Table 2 - Size Distribution of Elk Point Oil Pools (in units of 10⁶m³)

In-Place Pool Size Class	No. of Pools	Recoverable Reserves	Cumulative Production
less than 0.1	182	1.87	0.90
0.1 to 1	952	55.79	31.53
1.0 to 10	87	77.76	51.50
10.0 to 100	6	82.17	62.91
over 100	2	121.70	93.68
Total	1229	339.28 x 10⁶m³	240.51 x 10⁶m³

Last modified: August 11, 2008