East Texas is a gas wunderkind. The time-honored basin was once synonymous with the old oil patch, home to the great East Texas Field and its ripe, black-oil reservoirs in the prolific Upper Cretaceous. But it's a new day, and gas is the primary target now. These targets are older: mainly Jurassic Cotton Valley and Bossier reservoirs, with some Lower Cretaceous James Lime, Pettet and Travis Peak thrown in. Popular plays now range from straightforward tight-gas targets to tricky, high-temperature, high-pressure reservoirs. Operators wield an abundance of technologies such as staged fracture treatments in horizontal openhole laterals, microseismic frac monitoring, and oil-based-mud drilling in deep, hot rocks to extract abundant volumes of gas. East Texas now ranks as one of the nation's formidable gas-producing basins: it contributes 3.7 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day to domestic supply. And bountiful resources remain. Operators continue to access the region's opportunities, drawn to its plethora of reservoirs, solid economics, and excellent connection to markets. The most exhilarating news out of East Texas in recent months has been the rousing success of several horizontal wells drilled by Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp. For more on this, see the January issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-260-6441.
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