New Year 2007

The traditional Suneson Family New Year is celebrated with the McCord Family at the "Blue House" atop a piney East Texas hill,. The McCords annually host the Sunesons and along our mutual friends the Rices and Swindels at their gypsy cart horse breeding enterprise and acreage. We all have kids around the same ages and the boys energetically bounce from computer games to air-soft gun fights in the woods to rope swings and trampoline theatrics. The girl's activities are somewhat a mystery, but they will watch movies, help with the horse and barn chores and deal with the dogs and rabbits as well. There is always a jigsaw puzzle to be pieced together next to the fireplace in the living room and the world's problems are solved with discussion late into the night. The shared cooking responsibilities that always result in sumptuous communal meals at the grand table are the highlights of each relaxed day over the New Year Holiday; the wine tasting interspersed with samplings of ports, scotch and an occasional liqueur is also enjoyed leading up to New Year's Eve.

As the calendar marked the end of Christmas and the coming New Year, it looked like the McCord tradition would have to be broken by me in 2007. One of the well-known rules of the oil business is that if an oil well is to be any good, the geologist will have to be on location during a holiday or his wedding anniversary. My partner Todd Stallings and I had sold our Fandango West Prospect to West Texas Gas (WTG) out of Midland, Texas back at the end of the summer. By all rights the well should have been down to the pay zone on Halloween. But WTG had contracted a Chinese-built rig to drill the Rocker B 52 #1 well - its maiden well. Our lease was
going to expire October 1, 2006, but the well was spudded at 11 PM on September 30th, thereby saving the added expense of renewing the mineral lease. The drilling rig had numerous problems, the major disaster was that they got the drill pipe stuck in the hole at around 7,000 feet and finally had to cut the drill pipe off to get free and start drilling a new hole around the stuck pipe that was left behind. With this 3-4 week delay, it soon began to appear that I might have to drive out to location for Thanksgiving.

Drilling the Rocker B 52 #1 on New year's Eve

Then the rig began to list, drilling progress was again stopped and a large crane was needed to come and straighten it up. I had to tell my partner that I was obligated to dance in the Nutcracker Ballet so I could not make it out to the West Texas location prior to Christmas - Todd was incredulous, and to this day I do not know if he truly believes I had such an obligation, or whether he believes I just made up an excuse because I did not want to spend Christmas Eve at the rig. To his credit he did not ask too many questions. As I monitored the drilling progress over the internet it looked like I could spare to spend time with my parents and family for Christmas, but soon after the well would be getting close to our targeted pay zone.

The family packed up and headed east to the McCords for on schedule, where they had a good New Years Eve fireworks show from the myriad of whizzers, fab-poppers, fire fountains and spark-loppers that can be purchased for just such an occasion along all rural Texas highways at certain times of the year. I rented a Toyota SUV to take me west 380 miles to the site of the WTG #1 Rocker B 52 well, the last 15 miles are on ranch roads that had some hellacious mud puddles. When I returned the SUV to Hertz, the attendant came out to check the mileage on the vehicle, but when he saw the thick coating of West Texas mud across a good portion of the white exterior, he turned to me and said, "Man! What you do, film a Toyota commercial with this one?"

On New Year's Day we gathered in the mudlogger's trailer to what the computer screen that tracked the amount of time it took the drill bit to drill 1 foot of rock. When the time it takes to drill a foot decreases (in this case from 5 minutes/ft to 2 minutes/ft) it tells us that we are drilling rock that is more porous (not as solid) and porous rock (dolomite with holes) is where the oil and natural gas is to be found if everything works as planned - otherwise you get salt water in the porosity. Nobody will pay you for salt water, but they will pay you for oil and natural gas. We found the porosity we were looking for a 9,684' and then the question becomes, is it filled with oil or with water? To answer that question, we examine the rock chips (cuttings) that are ground up by the drill bit and washed out of the hole.

Mark watching the drill time with Mr. Chima Nzewunwah (Mudlogger)

If the cuttings are examined under UV light which will cause any oil to fluoresce. When the cuttings from the porosity zone were brought into the trailer to be examined we saw a faint light-blue fluorescence and the trailer filled with the unmistakable sweet smell of success (it smells like crude oil). We drilled 11' of the porosity and then stopped to test the formation to see what it would produce. The next day a Drill Stem Test (DST) sealed off the pay zone from all of the fluid in the hole and let the formation flow into the drill pipe. After 1 hour we recovered over 8200' of gas cut oil and not water, an excellent test. After the DST we went back to drilling to see how much porosity we would find in the Fusselman Formation. This took another few days. After we had drilled deep enough to evaluate the zones of interest, we stopped drilling and prepared to log the well, which is to run some specialized devices down to the bottom of the bore hole and then they would measure properties of the rock formations as we pulled the tools out of the hole. I drove back our to West Texas for the looking run to see first hand what kind of well we had. The logs showed that we have 15' of oil pay, then 8 feet of non-porous limestone and then another 26' of porous dolomite, that is mostly water at the bottom. But there are indications of more oil and gas in the lower zone too. However, despite my lobbying to test the lower zone, the decision was made by WTG to run pipe to the bottom of the hole and produce from the upper 4' of the upper 15' pay zone.

Logging the Rocker B 52 #1 on Jan 6, 2007

After a confirmation that my prediction of what we would find almost 2 miles below the Earth's surface was confirmed after several million dollars were spent, I left the location headed for home with a deep satisfaction and thankfulness. On my way off the 250 sq. mile Rocker B Ranch, I drove by to check on another well in which I have an interest, the Go & Go #1 Mallet. I have included a few photos of the #1 mallet pumpjack and some of the wildlife found out on the rolling mesquite plains of West Texas.

Mallet #1 in the West Texas sunset. A minimal producer for Sunstone Exploration, Inc.

A herd of West Texas Pronghorn Antelope grazing on the Rocker B Ranch.

We Wii

That metaphorical yellow puddle of excitement on the floor has now been mopped up. Grant had desired a gaming system for Christmas, so he researched the costs, pros and cons for each system and presented the comparison to us pair of Apatosauruses for our consideration. The top choice was the Wii Gaming System. We knew from news reports that the PlayStation 3 was so hyped that people were known to be sitting in line in front of Wal*Mart for days awaiting the arrival of the limited number of PS 3's. The Wii had no such reports associated with it - so being the reluctant shoppers we are, we waited until early December to begin looking to purchase a Wii.

Sold out. Sold out. Sold out - but maybe on Tuesday. Try again later. Give us a call, maybe a shipment will arrive on Sunday. Alas, Grant's stocking was stuffed with IOU. We continued to search post-Xmas; gathering phone numbers of nearby distributors and calling. The problem is that by the time he was out of school and called, all the Wii's had been sold. But there were PS 3's available now - go figure. Recriminations soon began to fly: "If you did not spend all day at work, you could get in line a get one before they sold out again!" "But, if we did not spend our time working, how would we pay for a Wii?" Good point. I thought so too.

V-Wii Day! January 16, 2007 (less than 3 weeks after Christmas) the local Games Stop has Wiis in stock the afternoon that Sue drops by to check. Sue grabs the penultimate Wii and floats beamingly out the door. A single step outside the door a panic stricken dad rushes up to her and asks in a plaintive voice, "Oh God, that isn't the last one is it?!" With her best impression of Marie Antoinette she spoke a cruel reply, "Oui, Oui!". Merry Christmas. [Actually there was 1 left which the poor fellow was able to purchase]