Potential producibility and recovery of natural gas from geopressured aquifers of the Cenozoic sediments of the Gulf Coast Basin

The geothermal geopressured gas resource of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast area was studied. It appears to offer a reasonable chance of developing into an energy resource of considerable magnitude. It has the additional advantage that the gas and electricity can be fed into existing transportation systems at minimal investments, and it would supplement declining production from other sources as it was brought on stream. No fundamental technical problems are foreseen, and there appears to be no radically new technology development required. Four areas discussed are: the economics of individual reservoir size, extended well productivity, brine saturation of the natural gas, and an economical and environmentally satisfactory means of brine disposal.