The Brown Dense is a nonconventional oil reservoir found in Southern Arkansas and Northern Louisiana. It ranges in vertical depths from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. It's laterally extensive over a large area, and ranging in thickness from 300 to 530 feet. Our investment in undeveloped acreage in the play area to date is approximately $150 million or $326 per acre, and our leases currently have an 82% average net revenue interest.
We will begin by targeting the higher gravity oil window under our lease, which we believe could be 40% to 55% API range. This formation is below the Haynesville and Smackover and is an upper Jurassic-aged, kerogen-rich, carbonate source rock, which covers an area from Texas to Florida.
We extensively reviewed the Brown Dense across the entire region and have indications that the right mix of reservoir depth, thickness, porosity, matrix permeability, sealing formations, thermal maturity and oil characteristics are found in the area of Southern Arkansas and Northern Louisiana. Porosity* ranges from 3% to 10% in the area, and anticipated pressure gradient is 0.62 psi per foot, so it is overpressured.
Estimated matrix for permeability based on various methods of measurement ranges from less than 0.1 millidarcy to more than 1 millidarcy. Both porosity and matric permeability are comparable to metrics reported in the Eagle Ford play in South Texas.
We have assembled a log data on 1,145 wells covered in 5 states to evaluate the Brown Dense, have acquired over 6,000 miles of 2-D seismic and have gathered and analyzed rock data from cores and cuttings from 70 wells that penetrated the Brown Dense zone. At this point, we currently have more data about the Brown Dense than we had on the Fayetteville Shale when it was announced.
We hope to receive a permit to drill our first well in Columbia County, Arkansas in August. And will spud later in the third quarter. This well is planned to drill to a vertical depth of approximately 8,900 feet and has a planned horizontal lateral length of 3,500 feet. This well will be extensively logged and a full course of plan over the entire Brown Dense interval before the well is completed. The completed well cost of this first well is approximately $10 million, which will have more than $2 million of science work.
Our second well is planned to spud later this year, with a total vertical depth of approximately 10,700 feet and a 6,000-foot horizontal lateral in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana. We plan to drill up to 10 wells in 2012, as we continue to test this concept. This formation serves several large conventional oil and gas fields, and our hope is to use horizontal drilling technology to unlock at least as much potential. Positive test results could significantly increase our activity in this play over the next several years.
We're also working on other new ventures, we'll provide more updates on those in the future.
*=oma korjaus SA:n tekstiin.
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