Houston-based Indigo Minerals announced today that it has struck pay dirt in one of the newest stretches of shale oil and gas in Louisiana to start drawing industry attention.
In a statement through its Louisiana subsidiary, Indigo II Louisiana Operating, the company said its first horizontal well in the Louisiana Eagle Ford Shale, also known as the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, resulted in oil and liquid natural gas finds. The 2.7 million-acre play spans central and southeast Louisiana and a section of southwest Mississippi.
The Indigo well, in Rapides Parish, flowed at a rate of about 543 barrels of oil per day during recent testing. To put that into perspective, the BP oil well that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico last April flowed at rate of 53,000 barrels per day before being capped in July, according to final estimates.
Even so, the Indigo discovery reinforces industry belief that newer hydraulic fracturing techniques, which pump water and chemicals deep into rocks to push out natural gas and oil, can reach central Louisiana shale oil and natural gas reserves once thought too costly to tap.
The find also shows the presence of valuable oil and liquid natural gas reserves. That could make the play more attractive than the Haynesville Shale to the north, which produces largely “dry” natural gas, or gas that contains no liquid hydrocarbons.
Indigo has assembled nearly 260,000 net acres in the Louisiana Eagle Ford. Canadian driller Encana Corp. and Devon Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City have also bought more than 200,000 acres each in the eastern parts of the play.
As shale drilling activity heats up in the central portion of the state, environmental groups are calling on the state to tighten regulations, including water use restrictions
