Sep 13, 2013, 12:40pm CDT  Deon Daugherty   Reporter- Houston Business Journal

Hydraulic fracturing in the Permian Basin is expected to drive oil production in West Texas to 2 million barrels of oil per day within five years.

Although the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas gets most of the chatter when it comes to talk of major oil production from hydraulic fracturing, the storied West Texas fields of the Permian Basin are revving up to steal the limelight.

Between January and June of this year, the Permian Basin has already surpassed oil production in the Eagle Ford, showing 889,808 barrels each day compared to the 598,706 barrels per day in South Texas, according to statistics from the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s energy industry.

Houston energy companies are among the top players in the field. The top producer in the Permian Basin is Houston’s Occidental Permian Ltd., which produced more than 20 million barrels during the first six months of the year. Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources USA Inc. was next with more than 12 million barrels of oil production. Rounding out the top three was Houston’s Apache Corp. (NYSE: APA), which produced almost 10 million barrels of oil.

The consensus is that the Permian Basin oil production will reach 2 million barrels of oil per day within the next five years, said Stephen Shepherd, an associate in the exploration and production research group at Simmons and Company International in Houston.

As production moderates in the Dakotas' Bakken Shale, the Permian is expected to fill the gap, Shepherd said.

Simmons and Company expects the Eagle Ford to surpass the Bakken in oil production sometime in 2014. In 2013, the Eagle Ford is on track to produce about 930,000 barrels of oil per day. The Williston Basin in the Bakken Shale is producing in 2013 a little more than 1 million barrels, and those two are expected to flip in 2014. The Permian should produce around 1.4 million in 2013.

It’s generally expected that the Eagle Ford will continue at that pace while the Permian will accelerate its production, driven by horizontal drilling.