Introduction to the Caddo Pine Island Field  Northwest Louisiana

The Caddo Pine Island Field was discovered during the turn of the 20th Century. In 1905, oil production began in the Caddo-Pine Island Field making it the second field discovered in Louisiana. By 1910, almost 25,000 people lived in this oil field region, and all land had been purchased and leased.

Gulf Oil decided to lease the Caddo Lake bottom to develop the field extension. In 1911 lake drilling resulted in the first inland and over-water isolated platform drilling in the United States.

The field is 64,000 acres in the northern part of Caddo Parish, Louisiana and is flanked to the west by Caddo Lake and to the east by the Red River. There have been over 35,000 producing wells drilled which have produced over four hundred million barrels of oil. It sits on top of the Sabine uplift, which is the stratagraphic uplift structure common to Northern Louisiana. Due to the uplift, many of the formations became excellent reservoir rock for hydrocarbons. Impervious formations called “cap rocks” create traps that allow the oil and gas to accumulate beneath them under great pressure.

The field produces oil and gas from multiple zones from the shallow Annona Chalk formation (1350’ – 1600’) to the Cotton Valley Formation (10,000’ – 12,000’). The Annona Chalk is a limestone formation with matrix porosity. The porosity within the matrix ranges from 23% to 27%, but the formation is very tight. The chalk has massive reserves with the production zone ranging from 150 to 250 foot thickness. The chalk has produced approximately 6 % of total contained reserves. The depth of the Annona formation ranges on average from 1400 feet to 1700 feet from the surface. The type of oil is paraffin based with a gravity ranging from 42 to 44.The wells in the Caddo Pine Island Field, for the most part, are considered stripper wells and qualify for preferential tax treatment in the United States.