The Eagle Ford Shale

The Eagle Ford Shale is quite an interesting location situated on the outskirts of the town Eagle Ford in South Texas.   The Eagle Ford Shale is located just below the Austin Chalk and just above the Edwards limestone formation. It is estimated that some areas of the Eagle Ford shale can go down as deep as 11,300 feet!

Texas has long been known for its oil and natural gas reservoirs and deposits, and it looks as though they may be gearing up to hit the motherlode in the Eagle Ford shale.

There has been a lot of interest from investors who would like to see the newly discovered natural gas reservoir beneath the Eagle Ford shale exploited for profit. And exploit it they will, with plans to increase drilling in addition to the myriad of wells operating in the area, there are plans to add even more in the coming months and years.

The reason there is so much interest in the Eagle Ford shale is because before the natural gas reservoir was discovered beneath it the area surrounding the Eagle Ford shale was considered dried up and useless.  But like all things, conceptions can be wrong and ideas flawed. It turns out that there is indeed a gigantic oil and natural gas reservoir lurking beneath the Eagle Ford Shale.

The moving force behind the interest in the Eagle Ford shale is Petrohawk Energy Corp. There are currently 17 wells operating in the Eagle Ford shale with plans to expand even more.

This is a very exciting time for investors of  EOG Resources (another prominent company in the energy industry) as they are now extracting somewhere in the vicinity of 602 barrels of oil per day, which is  returning quite a tidy sum for the company and its investors. They are however slowing down their drilling process until they can ascertain the “sweet spot” in the Eagle Ford Shale. This will be no easy task. They will need to bring in 3D seismic equipment to find this “sweet spot”. It will be akin to finding a needle in a haystack as the Eagle Ford shale boasts 120 some odd acres, and EOG resources is only looking for a 20 to 30 foot section out of that to run their pipe-line through.

Most of the wells that EOG Resources manages have been targeted to the lower lying areas of the Eagle Ford shale, this is the first time that the company has announced that they will be attempting to exploit the higher grounds of the area.

All this activity in the Eagle Ford shale is rather exciting because due to the global economic crisis demand for natural gas has fallen drastically, however the increased activity suggests that finally we are coming to the light at the end of the tunnel, and things will finally begin to go back to normal.

Some economists even say that Natural Gas could reach as high as $6 sometime before the end of the year, which is excellent news for companies such as EOG and its investors, although on the flip side it could be somewhat bad for us as we see heating costs increase this winter.