Haynesville Shale Gas Play, North Louisiana and East Texas

Here is some information on a newly economic shale gas play. It warrants watching closely.
Peter
source

Haynesville Shale: News, Map, Videos, Lease and Royalty Information
Haynesville Shale
Haynesville Shale Orientation:

The Haynesville Shale, is a black, organic-rich shale of Upper Jurassic age that underlies much of the Gulf Coast area of the United States. "Haynesville Shale" is a drillers term for shale rock units within the Haynesville Formation. The Haynesville Formation is underlain by the Smackover Formation and overlain by rocks of the Cotton Valley Group. It was deposited about 150 million years ago in a shallow offshore environment.

Geologists have long known that the Haynesville Formation contained natural gas. However, because of its low permeability the Haynesville was originally considered to be a gas source rock rather than a gas reservoir. Today, natural gas production from the Haynesville occurs from rocks about two miles beneath northwestern Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas and eastern Texas. The most productive areas have been Caddo, Bienville, Bossier, DeSoto, Red River and Webster Parishes of Louisiana plus adjacent areas in southwest Arkansas and east Texas.

Quote: Louisiana DOE

“This is an extraordinary time for Louisiana, particularly in north Louisiana, where we are experiencing something akin to a modern day gold rush due to excitement about the Haynesville Shale discovery. To put the magnitude of this sale into perspective: This month’s lease sale surpassed by more than double the bonus collections for the previous 11 months of FY 2007-08 combined, almost entirely because of activity in north Louisiana... 25 of the 38 leases awarded were from Caddo, Red River and Bienville parishes, totaling approximately $34 million in cash payments, and the average bonus per acre for these leases was over $13,400 per acre, while more typical prices in the past for north Louisiana have been around $400 per acre." (source)

Quote: Chesapeake Energy

“Based on its geoscientific, petrophysical and engineering research during the past two years and the results of three horizontal and four vertical wells it has drilled, Chesapeake believes the Haynesville Shale play could potentially have a larger impact on the company than any other play in which it has participated to date." (source)

News Reports
Haynesville Shale News: ShaleBlog.com, a blog tracking news about the Haynesville Shale.

Other Shale Resources
Marcellus Shale: Very similar to the Haynesville. The Marcellus Shale is a new gas resource of the Appalachian Basin.

Barnett Shale: Here's where it all started. The Barnett Shale of Texas was where the hydrofrac and horizontal drilling techniques were first mastered for tight shale reservoirs.

Fayetteville Shale: Another gas shale formation producing in northern Arkansas..

Oil and Gas Jobs

Oil and Gas Job Opportunties: Multiple shale plays happening across the United States have triggered an enormous demand for skilled workers and trainees.

Haynesville Stratigraphy

Gas production is mainly in the Haynesville Formation. However, some gas is also produced from the Cotton Valley Group and Smackover Formation.

Government & Regulatory
Questions and Answers About the Haynesville Shale: Answers from the Shreveport Mayor's Office about leases, landmen, signing bonus, royalties and drilling activities.

Louisiana Office of Mineral Resources: Monthly lease information and access to mineral resource records. Historical oil and gas production data. Historical lease and royalty data.

Louisiana Department of Natural Resources: Department "news" page.

Haynesville Economics
Economic Impact: Local officials of Shreveport get in touch with counterparts in Fort Worth to find out what they learned from their Barnett Shale experience.

Chesapeake Rig Tour: KSLA video showing a drill rig with details on the horizontal well technique.

Waiting to Sign: Property owners are uniting and holding out for the best deal possible. Their supergroup represents 6000 owners. They have an offer of $27,200 per acre signing bonus plus 26% royalty.

Advice for Property Owners: There are many sources of advice on leasing a natural gas property. This video explores the options that landowners have for advice.

Gas Lease and Royalty
Gas Lease Forum: Knowledge is power when you receive an offer to lease your land. Find out what others are being offered and share advice at this forum.

Natural Gas Lease Database: See how much was paid as a signing bonus to numerous landowners in most counties. Includes transaction date, signing bonus per acre, term of lease, royalty rate and number of acres. Share your information anonymously to help others.

National Association of Royalty Owners: The only national organization representing, solely and without compromise, oil and gas royalty owners interests.

Wellhead Price of Natural Gas: Current and historical price data from the US Energy Information Administration.

Gas Lease Blog: Information on natural gas development and leases.

Glossary of Natural Gas Leasing Terms: Look up definitions to understand your lease or whatever you are reading.

Gas Leasing FAQ's: Some of the best questions answered right here.

Geology News
Daily news for geology and earth science. Delivered to you free by RSS or email.

Haynesville Shale Map
Drilling activity in the Haynesville Shale has been most active in Caddo, Bossier, DeSoto and Webster Parishes, Louisiana plus adjacent areas in southwest Arkansas and east Texas. The Shreveport Times has a well location map for Louisiana.

Estimate Your Royalty
Natural Gas Royalty Estimator: Enter data from your lease agreement and make a few assumptions. Unoffical estimates of your annual royalty payments.

Wellhead Price History
The wellhead price of natural gas changes in response to market and political forces.

Haynesville Drilling
The productive potential of the Haynesville Shale was not fully realized until horizontal drilling and hydrofracing technologies were demonstrated in other unconventional shale reservoirs. The hydrofracing process helps liberate gas from the shale and horizontal drilling allows a single well to drain a much larger volume of rock than a traditional vertical well.

Unconventional Gas Technology:A "white paper" by Schlumberger, the well service company. Explains how hydraulic fracturing is used to stimulate production in tight gas shale reservoirs. (large .pdf file)

How Much Water is Needed? Frac jobs require a lot of water. Here's some experience on water needs from the Barnett Shale of Texas..

Interactive Drill Rig: Learn about drill rigs and drilling with this interactive presentation by Dale Energy.

Offshore Drilling For Oil and Gas: A Good Thing In Many Ways

There are many myths perpetuated by the mainstream media, and lacking any other information, the public generally accepts what we hear on the nightly news, and read in most popular publications. The following essay about offshore drilling dispels several of these myths.

First, I admit I have always assumed offshore drilling and production platforms were pretty "dirty" affairs, with unavoidable oil and gas leaks, and other pollutants finding their way into the ocean. According to this article, Louisiana, with 3,200 production platforms, has never had a major oil spill. It seems the major oil spills come from the shipment of oil in tankers, not from the production of oil.

Then there is the issue of the benefits to the marine fisheries by the "artificial reef" environments created by these oil and gas production platforms. Apparently the fish and fishermen love them! Who would have thought it? Not our ever-vigilant "environmentalists apparently. The article makes a strong case for opening up other offshore areas of the United States for oil and gas exploration and production.
Peter

The Environmental Benefits of Offshore Drilling
Humberto Fontova
Monday, June 02, 2008
source
Louisiana produces almost 30 per cent of America's commercial fisheries. Only Alaska (ten times the size of the Bayou state) produces slightly more. So obviously, Louisiana's coastal waters are immensely rich and prolific in seafood.

These same coastal waters contain 3,200 of the roughly 3,700 offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. From these, Louisiana also produces 25 per cent of America's domestic oil, and no major oil spill has ever soiled its coast. So for those interested in evidence over hysterics, by simply looking bayou-ward, a lesson in the “environmental perils” of offshore oil drilling presents itself very clearly.

Fashionable Florida, on the other hand, which zealously prohibits offshore oil drilling, had its gorgeous "Emerald Coast" panhandle beaches soiled by an ugly oil spill in 1976. This spill, as almost all oil spills, resulted from the transportation of oil – not from the extraction of oil. Assuming such as Hugo Chavez deign to keep selling us oil, we'll need increasingly more and we'll need to keep transporting it stateside – typically to refineries in Louisiana and Texas.

This path takes those tankers (as the one in 1976) smack in front of Florida's panhandle beaches. Recall the Valdez, the Cadiz, the Argo Merchant. These were all tanker spills. The production of oil is relatively clean and safe. Again, it's the transportation that presents the greatest risk. And even these spills (though hyped hysterically as environmental catastrophes) always play out as minor blips, those pictures of oil-soaked seagulls notwithstanding. To the horror and anguish of professional greenies, Alaska's Prince William Sound recovered completely. More birds get fried by landing on power lines and smashed to pulp against picture windows in one week than perished from three decades of oil spills.

For fear of oil spills, as of 2008, the U.S. Federal government and various states ban drilling in thousands upon thousands of square miles off the U.S. Coast. These areas, primarily on the Outer Continental Shelf, hold an estimated 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This leaves America 's energy needs increasingly at the mercy of foreign autocrats, despots and maniacs. All the while worldwide demand for oil ratchets ever and ever upward.
"Environmentalists" wake up in the middle of the night sweating and whimpering about offshore oil platforms only because they've never seen what's under them. This proliferation of marine life around the platforms turned on its head every "environmental expert" opinion of its day.
The original plan, mandated by federal environmental "experts" back in the late '40s, was to remove the big, ugly, polluting, environmentally hazardous contraptions as soon as they stopped producing. Fine, said the oil companies.

About 15 years ago some wells played out off Louisiana and the oil companies tried to comply. Their ears are still ringing from the clamor fishermen put up. Turns out those platforms are going nowhere, and by popular demand of those with a bigger stake in the marine environment than any "environmentalist."

Every "environmental" superstition against these structures was turned on its head. Marine life had EXPLODED around these huge artificial reefs: A study by LSU's Sea Grant college shows that 85 percent of Louisiana fishing trips involve fishing around these platforms. The same study shows 50 times more marine life around an oil production platform than in the surrounding Gulf bottoms.

An environmental study (by apparently honest scientists) revealed that urban runoff and treated sewage dump 12 times the amount of petroleum into the Gulf than those thousands of oil production platforms. And oil seeping naturally through the ocean floor into the Gulf, where it dissipates over time, accounts for 7 times the amount spilled by rigs and pipelines in any given year.

The Flower Garden coral reefs lie off the Louisiana-Texas border. Unlike any of the Florida Keys reefs, they're surrounded by dozens of offshore oil platforms.
These have been pumping away for the past 50 years. Yet according to G.P. Schmahl, a Federal biologist who worked for decades in both places, "The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me," he admits. "And I think it's a surprise to most people."

"A key measure of the health of a reef is the amount of area taken up by coral," according to a report by Steve Gittings, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's science coordinator for marine sanctuaries. "Louisiana's Flower Garden boasts nearly 50 percent coral cover. In the Florida Keys it can run as little as 5 percent."

Mark Ferrulo, a Florida "environmental activist" uses the very example of Louisiana for his anti-offshore drilling campaign, calling Louisiana's coast "the nation's toilet."
Florida's fishing fleet must love fishing in toilets, and her restaurants serving what's in them. Most of the red snapper you eat in Florida restaurants are caught around Louisiana's oil platforms. We see the Florida-registered boats tied up to them constantly. Sometimes us locals can barely squeeze in.

In 1986 Louisiana started the Rigs to Reef program, a cooperative effort by oil companies, the feds and the state. This program literally pays the oil companies to keep the platforms in the Gulf. Now some platforms are simply cut off at the bottom and toppled over as artificial reefs; over 60 have been toppled thus far.

A few years back, Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries officials were invited to Australia to help them with a similar program. Think about it: here's Australia, the nation with the Great Barrier Reef, the world's biggest natural reef, the world's top dive destination – they're asking help from “the nation's toilet” about developing exciting dive sites by using the very structures that epitomize (in greenie eyes) environmental disaster.

America desperately needs more domestic oil. In the process of producing it, we'd also get dynamite fishing, dynamite diving, and a cheaper tab for broiled red snapper with shrimp topping.

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