I commented the other day about the geographic limits of the different shale plays: even if oil prices stay high enough to justify drilling Eagle Ford wells there will still be a limit on the number of future wells drilled. A limit that easily refutes some of the more optimistic projections of future EFS production: if it ain't there no one is going to drill it. Which supports my nasty claim: some of those predictions aren't worth sh*t. LOL. Since that thread is old I thought I would post an update here:
Just had an interesting conversation with a company looking for my financial help to drill some wells in Lavaca County, Texas. On trend and less than 100 miles from the heart of the EFS play. I asked how the EFS play might affect leasing costs in this area. Easy answer: not at all. The EFS is thinning out and by the time you get to the eastern edge of the county it's only 30' thick. More importantly, no one has taken EFS leases in this area during the last 3 years. IOW the eastern limit of the EFS (even at $100/bbl) appears to be delineated. As I said in my other post some folks toss out big EFS potential production numbers yet fail to show on a map exactly where those thousands of wells would be drilled. Obviously if those big numbers require drilling EFS wells across Lavaca County they truly aren't worth a sh*t. LOL.
As I've repeatedly pointed out every "hot" that has ever been developed over the last 100 years has petered out even when oil/NG prices stayed high. They did so for an inescapable fact: finite geographic limits. Such limits exist for the EFS, the Bakken, the Marcellus, etc. No matter how much you want to do it you just can't produce a reservoir where it doesn't exist...no matter how much someone predicts the play will produce. Eagle Ford drilling is still going strong...for now. But eventually it will grind to a halt no matter what the price of oil might be. Just as every oil/NG play on the planet has done.