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.
Findings from the Eagle Ford Outcrops of West Texas and Implications to the Subsurface of South Texas
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Published:January 01, 2016
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CiteCitation
Arthur D. Donovan, T. Scott Staerker, Rand Gardner, Michael C. Pope, Aris Pramudito, Matthew Wehner, 2016. "Findings from the Eagle Ford Outcrops of West Texas and Implications to the Subsurface of South Texas", The Eagle Ford Shale: A Renaissance in U.S. Oil Production, John Breyer
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Abstract
The Eagle Ford Group crops out in a series of spectacular cut-bank exposures within Lozier Canyon region in Terrell County (west Texas). These outcrops provide an unparalleled opportunity to examine the Eagle Ford Group and gain valuable insights into explaining and predicting the vertical and lateral variability, as well as the thickness changes that can occur regionally within an unconventional source rock play.
In the subsurface of south Texas, the Eagle Ford Group is typically divided into an organic-rich Lower Eagle Formation and a carbonate-rich Upper Eagle Ford Formation. Both formations are petrophysically distinct, especially on gamma ray (GR)...
- allostratigraphy
- Austin Chalk
- C-13/C-12
- carbon
- clastic rocks
- correlation
- Cretaceous
- Eagle Ford Formation
- Gulf Coastal Plain
- Gulfian
- isotope ratios
- isotopes
- lithofacies
- lithostratigraphy
- mapping
- Mesozoic
- mudstone
- nomenclature
- North America
- oceanic anoxic events
- organic compounds
- outcrops
- petroleum
- reservoir rocks
- resistivity
- sedimentary rocks
- sequence stratigraphy
- source rocks
- spatial distribution
- stable isotopes
- Terrell County Texas
- Texas
- thickness
- total organic carbon
- Turonian
- unconformities
- United States
- Upper Cretaceous
- variations
- well logs
- West Texas
- southern Texas
- Lozier Canyon