The Eagle Ford shale, a deep rock layer in South Texas that spans several hundred miles from near Mexico to East Texas, is being hailed by some experts as the sixth largest oil discovery in U.S. history. This major new U.S. oil discovery holds literally billions of barrels of crude and has the advantage of being on land, at a time when the prospect for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is looking bleak for oil companies.  The terrible Deepwater Horizon explosion and BP oil spill will make offshore oil drilling much more expensive and complicated. New environmental regulations and a long term ban drilling in some areas of the Gulf are causing oil companies to take a closer look at land based oil prospects such as the Eagle Ford shale. This relatively new discovery was first thought of as only a natural gas find. However, upon closer geological analysis and the drilling of several test holes across an area over 400 miles long, it was found to hold vast quantities of light sweet crude at the shallower, upper and central portions of the rock formation. Land leasing in the Eagle Ford shale has gone completely stratospheric, with some landowners near proven wells getting as much as $9,000 per acre and up to one quarter of any future production or “royalties”.

In this map of the new Eagle Ford shale oil discovery you can see that it spans a very wide area:

Land Drilling Much Safer

Spills on land are much easier to clean up and rarely happen. In this arid part of the country there are not  many rivers or bodies of water that could be contaminated should an oil spill occur. As far as low impact areas for oil and gas drilling go, the Eagle Ford shale of South Texas rates far higher than places such as the North Slope or coastal marshlands. Much of the area has already been an oilfield for over eighty years and there is a lot of experience with regulation and inspection of new wells.  Existing pipelines and oil refineries close by will make this major new American oil discovery highly profitable for those companies who have already leased up land to drill on.  Some new horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford shale are making over 1,500 barrels of oil a day.

As we continue to need more and more oil, and the BP oil spill has temporarily put a lid on Gulf of Mexico drilling, the Eagle Ford shale will be high on the list of places being explored. For more on the major drilling programs being planned for this region see: Eagle Ford Shale Blog