Much like a cowboy venturing into uncharted territory, E&Ps are roaming Northeast Texas and the far-western sections of the Haynesville Shale in search of more natural gas. It’s a challenging adventure, and while there’s a lot of hope and hype, the recent history of developments outside the Haynesville’s main producing areas shows that success is far from guaranteed. In today’s RBN blog, the second in a series on the Western Haynesville, we’ll discuss how some companies are handling the high-pressure, high-risk environment.
We have written extensively about the Haynesville Shale (see Say You’ll Be There, Don’t Call It A Comeback and, most recently, Sitting, Waiting, Wishing). The Haynesville, one of the OGs of shale development, burst onto the scene in 2008 during the early days of the Shale Revolution. The most popular gas development areas (blue-shaded region in Figure 1) have been Bossier, Caddo, DeSoto and Red River parishes in Louisiana along with Harrison and Panola counties in Texas.
Figure 1. The Haynesville and Surrounding Areas. Source: RBN
But the core part of what we and the broader market generally refer to as the Haynesville has been heavily drilled, and with natural gas prices widely expected to rise as new LNG export capacity comes online along the Gulf Coast (see All Shook Up), producers are expanding outward to non-core areas. In Part 1 of this miniseries, we discussed how oil and gas exploration is venturing into the far-western parts of the Haynesville — particularly the recent activity in Freestone, Leon, Limestone and Robertson counties (dark-green-shaded area in Figure 1), which is quite a distance (about 200 miles) from DeSoto Parish and closer to Dallas. These four North Texas counties are not the core of the Haynesville, but there are Haynesville formations present, and the area is referred to by many as the Western Haynesville.
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