Playbooks

A treasure trove of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas lies within western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma's Fayetteville, Woodford and Caney shales. Operators are busy honing sophisticated horizontal drilling and completion technologies to extract this wealth from the Arkoma Basin's rich, black shales.

    

Activity in the Bakken Shale Play, both oil and gas, is exploding. New operators enter the area daily. New technology hits the ground or subsurface regularly. New offtake systems are designed and installed to meet burgeoning production. Tax structures change often as do local and regional regulations. All this happens as the play continues to expand. Too much to get your hands around? Not if you have a copy of Hart's Bakken Shale Play Book, the definitive reference book for information about this important play.

Chapters: Bakken Overview US and Canada -- Bakken Characteristics -- Key Players -- Key Technologies -- Infrastructure and Offtake -- Economics -- The Future.

    

North Texas' Barnett shale is the granddaddy of modern shale plays. During the past decade, activity has exploded to encompass all or parts of 20 counties. Today, more than 12,000 Barnett shale wells produce 5 billion cubic feet of gas per day, and nearly three-fourths of these wells are horizontal. Success has been so robust that Barnett gas is now approaching 10% of U.S. domestic supply.

Despite the intensive drilling programs of the past several years, great volumes of gas still remain to be extracted from the Barnett reservoir. Efforts in this leading shale play have shifted to controlling costs and improving recovery of in-place gas.

    

The Eagle Ford shale trends across a great swath of Texas, stretching from Giddings Field in Brazos and Grimes counties down into the Maverick Basin in Maverick County. The Cretaceous Eagle Ford has long been known as a tremendous source rock, and now it's coming into its own as a prolific shale reservoir. Across its trend, the Eagle Ford's hydrocarbon content shifts from dry gas to oil. These variations, as well as changes in depth and local geology, make portions of the Eagle Ford trend particularly attractive to explorers.

    

Operators are applying both horizontal and vertical wells to produce reserves from this longtime target that occupies a swath 160 miles long and 30 miles wide in the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma. The Granite Wash is an extraordinary reservoir, prone to extreme variations in thickness, grain size, pore-size distribution, number of prospective intervals and gas/oil ratio. Economic rates are achieved by multistage, slickwater fracture treatments and close attention to costs.

Chapters: Play overviews -- Key Players: Company profiles section -- Key Technologies, horizontal and vertical drilling, emphasis on cost-control -- Midstream Activities and Joint Ventures -- Economics -- Reference Section.

    

East Texas and North Louisiana have served up another tantalizing reservoir in the superb Haynesville shale. The Jurassic Haynesville is a wonder, displaying every desirable characteristic of a prime shale reservoir. Well results are excellent, economics are compelling and excitement continues to grow!

The Haynesville Shale has been estimated to be the largest natural gas field in the 48 states with an estimated 250 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. This play has the attention of the entire industry, the investment community, E&P companies, service companies, and pipeline companies. The demand for additional information on the Haynesville is clearly evident on the search engines of our websites.

    

Far northeastern British Columbia's Horn River basin is home to tremendous, very thick Middle Devonian shales. These shales--Muskwa, Otter Park, Klua and Evie-are in the earliest stages of development in a region that has no conventional oil and gas production. Yet, the basin is on the brink of becoming a major unconventional field that will have a long-term impact on continental natural-gas supply.

    

The Appalachian Basin's Marcellus shale holds the promise to become a top producing shale reservoir. It covers a vast area-many times larger than any other shale play--and exhibits excellent reservoir qualities. Recent strong well results show that the Marcellus is living up to its promise, and its location in the core of North America's premium natural-gas markets gives it leverage over more distant supplies. Find out the latest in this inclusive compilation. Includes two-page map in the publication.