2009 looks promising for the Haynesville Shale
Jim Roberts jroberts@ktbs.com
Created: February 12, 2009 05:28 PM
Modified: February 12, 2009 05:28 PM
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2009 looks to be a promising year for the Haynesville shale.
Encana, a Canadian natural gas company, have already drilled wells into the shale.
Jeff Wojahn, director of U.S. operations, says none of the wells are record breakers, but they are producing sizable amounts of natural gas.
"They're strong wells. We have had good results that have been equivalent to results published by the industry," said Wojahn.
Those results have encouraged Encana to plan on drilling five more wells over the next year, into the Haynesville shale and another formation called the Deep Bossier.
Chesapeake Energy, one of the early players in the shale, is also looking to expand in 2009. "We're currently operating 20 rigs a today. We expect to end the year with 35 rigs operational in this 3.5 million acre acrea," said Kevin McCotter, company spokesman.
Another big player, Petrohawk, also has plans to add at least a dozen more rigs.
Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, says there is almost 100 rigs working in north Louisiana.
Many of those rigs were moved from the Barnett shale in Fort Worth and the Marcellus shale in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Buck