SAN ANTONIO ─ At either end of the Eagle Ford shale play, Laredo Energy IV LP sees similar formations and the potential for prolific production. By drilling into the Eagle Ford in its acreage in Webb and Zapata counties near the Mexican border and in Brazos and Burleson counties east of the San Marcos Arch, the company is tapped into a number of shallower formations in a big way.

“One of the benefits we had from drilling all those Eagle Ford wells in South Texas is that we passed through other horizons and matched those up with our 3-D seismic. We had great geological advances that gave us the ability to bring the play to southern Webb County, which is what we are doing,” said Glenn Hart, chairman, president and CEO, Laredo Energy, at Hart Energy’s DUG Eagle Ford conference on Sept. 17.

Those same wells penetrated the Olmos Formation and helped the company figure out that horizon as well. “Our geophysicist, John Hennessy, came up with a great looking anomaly that cut right across the middle of our acreage. We drilled an Eagle Ford well and penetrated it. It looked good on the logs. Nobody on the planet thought you could drill a 10 MMcf/d Olmos well. We ended up drilling quite a few wells in that Olmos anomaly,” he continued.

Geologists Are Superstars

The No. 1 determining factor for success is where to drill in the first place. “We’ve got great technical expertise, particularly our geologists. I’m a petroleum engineer and it pains me a little bit to say our geologists are our superstars, but it’s a fact,” he laughed. “We’re pretty good engineers, too, but they are excellent.”

After the company sold its Laredo Energy III LP, the company wanted to make a resource play on what was known as the Escondido Sand in northern Webb County. The company had some highly productive wells in the Navarro Sand in the southern part of the county in the Lobo Wilcox Trend.

As an example of the company’s tunnel vision and superstar geologists, Hart said, “Northern Webb County may as well have been Kazakhstan for us. We paid no attention to it at all. Jerry Holditch, [senior vice president, geology], walked in one day and said the sand we call the Navarro in the Lobo Trend is what they call the Escondido Sand [in northern Webb County].

“Before we go drill a 13,000-ft (3,963-m), geopressured horizontal well, why don’t we go up on the shelf and drill where it is at 5,000 ft (1,524 m) and the pressure is normal,’ [Holditch] said. That sounded like a pretty good idea to me. We started studying that a lot more and discovered the Escondido relatively blankets a large part of the county. We leased what turned out to be a 125,000-acre position for the Escondido,” Hart explained.

When Laredo Energy started leasing in the northern part of the county, there was no competition for leases. Some of the ranches there had not been leased in the last 20 years. Then, the company started running into some newcomers ─ landmen looking for the Eagle Ford Shale.

“That was purely serendipitous for us. Dick Stoneburner’s Hawkville discovery was about 25 miles from us, and we were dead on strike with that well. We ended up drilling Eagle Ford wells. The Hill Ranch No. 1 was our first horizontal Escondido well that got us off to a successful start. Then the Benavides No. 2 was the first Eagle Ford well,” he continued.

“In both instances, we gathered a lot of information. We were rookies to shale and unconventional plays. We joked about running every log in Schlumberger’s catalog,” he added.

The company ended up drilling 26 horizontal Eagle Ford wells before natural gas prices started to fall and Eagle Ford dry gas fell out of the money. “As we drilled those 26 wells, we got tremendous shows in the Austin Chalk. Nobody would pay attention to shows, so we drilled two successful horizontal Austin Chalk wells,” Hart said.

The company wanted to harness the Austin Chalk in addition to the Eagle Ford. On several wells, the company set plugs in the lateral after a number of months as the well established a production profile. “We ended up doing one stage or sometimes two stages in the curve in the Austin Chalk to produce it by itself,” he continued.

Laredo Energy went to the Texas Railroad Commission (TRRC) to get permission to commingle production from the Eagle Ford and Austin Chalk. “After we got the TRRC to allow commingling in the field on initial completion, that well is the best well in the field so far,” he emphasized.

“We also established the San Miguel, Elmos B and two different Escondido zones with successful horizontal wells. With the oil and gas price environment, we shifted over to drilling the Escondido primarily. As it turned out over time, the Escondido wells in gross production were much better versus Eagle Ford production.”

Eagle Ford Lessons Applied in Eaglebine

Hart first worked in the Eaglebine in 1983, drilling nine Buda/Georgetown wells while with Michael Petroleum. Laredo Energy was ready to go back into the play to get some oil production in an area that “we actually know. We were just as interested in the other horizons in the Eaglebine as we were in Eagle Ford,” he explained.

In the shallower section of the Eaglebine, the company thinks there is potential in the Pecan Gap limestone, the Olmos and Escondido/Navarro. “This section is very similar to the one in South Texas,” he added.

In the deeper section, the company has the Austin Chalk, Eagle Ford and Buda/Georgetown. “Particularly the Austin Chalk and Buda/Georgetown have never been tried with the new horizontal completion techniques of plug-and-perf and big fracks,” Hart said.

The company’s Brazos spend is over four counties. The company has joint ventures with companies that include Halcón, Comstock Resources and a local operator, Dyson Energy.

“In our efforts in the Brazos County area, we have one Buda/Georgetown horizontal completion, three Eagle Ford horizontal wells, one Woodbine vertical well, one Woodbine horizontal well and two Austin Chalk horizontal wells. We’ve got potential for the Taylor and Pecan Gap we haven’t tried yet,” he continued.

Contact the author, Scott Weeden, at sweeden@hartenergy.com.