Delineation of an Oil Window—An Integrated Approach
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Published:January 01, 2016
Abstract
In 2006, Mark Papa, CEO of EOG Resources, Inc. directed EOG divisions to focus on identifying and leasing large acreage blocks in shale oil window fairways (Mark Papa, personal communication) in basins throughout the United States while subordinating all exploration for natural gas, and in particular, dry gas. The company’s strategic change to shale oil exploration occurred during what was referred to as a “wall of disbelief” (Birger, 2011) predicated on the premise that oil molecules could not flow through shale-dominated permeability systems. The EOG Garner 1054 C#1, drilled in November 1998, encountered hydrocarbons within the Eagle Ford Formation...
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Contents
The Eagle Ford Shale: A Renaissance in U.S. Oil Production

Known as a world-class source rock for years, the Eagle Ford Shale became a world-class oil reservoir early in the second decade of the 21st century. Oil production from the Eagle Ford grew from 352 barrels of oil per day (BOPD) in 2007 to over 1.7 million BOPD in March 2015. Since then, the play has been a victim of its own success. Production from shale oil in the United States has helped contribute to a glut in world oil supply that led to a precipitous drop in oil prices beginning in the summer of 2014. As prices fell from over $100 per barrel in July 2014, to less than $30 per barrel in January 2016, production from the Eagle Ford declined over 500,000 BOPD. Anyone interested in the geology behind this remarkable play and the new ideas that reshaped the global energy supply should read AAPG Memoir 110.
GeoRef
- Barnett Shale
- Carboniferous
- clastic rocks
- Cretaceous
- crude oil
- Eagle Ford Formation
- East Texas
- electron microscopy data
- genesis
- Gonzales County Texas
- Gulfian
- La Salle County Texas
- lithostratigraphy
- mapping
- Mesozoic
- Mississippian
- natural gas
- oceanic anoxic events
- organic compounds
- paleo-oceanography
- Paleozoic
- permeability
- petroleum
- porosity
- pressure
- saturation
- sedimentary rocks
- SEM data
- shale
- shale oil
- Texas
- thermal maturity
- thickness
- total organic carbon
- United States
- Upper Cretaceous
- well logs
- X-ray diffraction data