Saudi Arabia has the sixth biggest natural gas reserves in the world. However, the problem is that Saudi Arabia does not currently import or export natural gas, and therefore has no structures in place to start supplying it. And now that natural gas prices are on the rise, it's time to take a look at a shale play that could end up being quite profitable But it's not enough to simply recognize that natural gas prices are making a comeback, or that major players like ExxonMobil are paying a hefty price for their own piece of the shale profits For individual investors, knowing the difference between the various shale formations is critical when separating the good, the bad, and the downright profitable.
We can pinpoint the start of the shale boom with a technological breakthrough George Mitchell used to tap the Barnett shale play back in the s In short order, the Barnett became the largest onshore natural gas field in the U. For the last twenty years, the formation has produced more than 12 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and today there are over 16, gas wells on record in the Barnett. However, low-price natural gas environment in took its toll, and despite hitting new production highs in , the Barnett's success led a rush for companies to develop new shale plays across the lower 48 states — including a shale play sitting over miles directly east of Fort Worth Consisting mostly of sedimentary rock, the Haynesville Shale play is found roughly 10, feet below parts of northwestern Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas' eastern border.
If you had a dime in shale investments back in , you would have made a solid profit on companies drilling in the play. The buzz over the Haynesville rose at a feverish pace. Output quickly skyrocketed as drillers frantically tried to extract the 60 trillion cubic feet held tightly within the rock According to data from the Energy Information Administration, the Haynesville overtook the Barnett as the country's highest-producing shale gas deposit back in March Unfortunately, was a frustrating year for Haynesville operators.
It was next to impossible for output to increase after watching drilling activity diminish over the year. This formation stretches across five states, from New York to West Virginia, with the vast majority in Pennsylvania.
Source: EIA. The Best Free Investment You'll Ever Make Our analysts have traveled the world over, dedicated to finding the best and most profitable investments in the global energy markets.
All you have to do to join our Energy and Capital investment community is sign up for the daily newsletter below. Our Top Shale Play. But there's another figure oft forgotten in this story It's more likely than not you've never heard of Preston Barmore.
Two years before Drake, Preston was drilling less than a mile away from Hart's gas well. And things haven't been the same for this sector since. Shale Gas Before running through the various U. Expert mineral and royalty insights from your email. Now you can get guidance from Rock River delivered right to your inbox.
Sign up with your email today. Thank you. Your email address has been submitted. As a result, a fascination with shale as a new source of hydrocarbons oil and natural gas has risen to the surface of our national consciousness. Words like play, shale, and basin appear in the news media, pop up on crossword puzzles and dominate conversations at the water cooler — especially among mineral rights and royalty owners.
Although these terms may sound a bit complicated, we are here to give a quick primer on all you need to know to take a seat at the table with other experts in the field. Geological basins are the birthplace of oil and gas reserves. Basins are landscapes of the past, which have been filled in with rocks and sediments accumulated over millions of years. Picture a layer cake, where the oldest rocks lie at the bottom and the youngest at the top.
There are three main categories of rock — igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Over time, sediments captured in basins bond together to become large rock formations known as sedimentary rock.
The most common sedimentary rock — and arguably the most important for the current Oil and Gas Industry — is shale. Shale is the generic term for rock formed over millions of years from silt and clay-sized particles a.
A petroleum basin includes a diverse collection of rocks and sediments, but most importantly it contains source rocks. Source rocks are specific shale formations in a basin and are where oil and gas are born. Deposits that once contained rich organic materials — everything from plants, animals, microbes, algae and tiny organisms such as zooplankton and phytoplankton — once flourished in the oceans before settling at the bottom of the ancient seafloor.
Given millions of years and increased temperatures, kerogen converts to oil or gas through a process known as thermal cracking. Thermal cracking is the technical term for the breaking down of larger and more complex kerogen molecules into smaller components i.
Drillers on this play are able to produce about 4. Haynesville play is known as one of the big players in getting production companies to rethink their business practices and models. It also helped significantly in lowering the price of natural gas in the United States.
This play yields 6. The Bakken play is smaller than the Eagle Ford play. It produces about 1 million barrels of oil per day. The gas production is significantly less than most of the others, only getting about 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. This has long been known as a great shale play, but until recently the technology was not available to properly drill here. It has been considered one of the best and biggest oil discoveries in recent history.
The Anadarko-Woodford shale play was first drilled in This shale play offers about 1, barrels of oil per day as well as 47, cubic feet of natural gas. It is expected that the Anadarko-Woodford shale play has approximately There are nearly wells across the play, and the rig count has stayed fairly over the last few years. With a rich area of mineral deposits, the panhandle area of Oklahoma and Texas makes for a great drilling area for natural gas and crude oil.
There are formations at approximately 11,, feet in the Granite Wash play. The wells in this play have up to 15 frac stages. This play produces about 27 million cubic feet of natural gas and nearly 3, barrels per day of oil.
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