I attended a continuing education seminar in Houston recently, for people in the legal and commercial real estate sectors, as I was invited to participate on an energy panel. The biggest questions of the day: Is this boom for real; is it sustainable? How long will it last?

I reminded the audience of that old oil patch saying, “This time it's different.”

Fellow panelist Harold Hunt, research economist at Texas A&M University's Real Estate Center, looked at it this way: There are 16 new hotels in tiny Cotulla, Texas, he said. And he was told recently while visiting there, that there are, finally, too many hotel rooms being built in Cotulla! After all, Cotulla has only 3,700 permanent residents, although that number has swelled lately, tripling in size since the 2010 US Census, thanks to the influx of oilfield workers. It is the county seat of LaSalle County, in the heart of the Eagle Ford shale.

If you are a real estate developer trying to chase opportunity, where does that opportunity stop and over-eager folly begin—when is it too late?

I think this boom has legs, what with companies announcing better results all the time, experimenting with technologies and downspacing pilots, and reporting literally 20 to 30 years of drilling inventory in each play—or more.

At DUG Eagle Ford, Pioneer Resources' CEO Scott Sheffield said he thinks the Permian Basin will end up “being the equivalent of 12 Eagle Fords.”

Sure, there are caveats ahead. Government regulation, taxation and the potential of falling commodity prices are always threats to consider in scenario planning. Infrastructure bottlenecks will delay production here and there, then speed it up again once the valves are turned on.

Analysts like to point out that as a play matures, two or three years down the line, the IPs (initial production rates) per well start falling off and the size of discoveries declines. The good times are over, they imply. But this is not necessarily so. It all depends on where you are in the play (by location and time of entry) and what kind of expertise you can bring to bear.

So many factors demand experimentation when operators fine-tune their drilling and completion practices.

For example, in a report from KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Jack Aydin, we learn that Whiting Petroleum Corp. is reporting much better results in North Dakota now that it has changed its completion designs.

“Whiting's new Bakken completion design utilizes a cemented liner (vs. un-cemented), plug-and-perf (vs. sliding sleeve), with double the sand volume,” Aydin writes. “The cemented liner plug-and-perf has three perforation clusters per frac stage, as opposed to one, when utilizing a sliding sleeve design, which increases the potential hydrocarbon entry points by a factor of three.

“This has the effect of stimulating more rock closer to the wellbore. Besides resulting in significantly improved IP rates, the wells can be placed closer together without experiencing interference, due to the fact that the frac does not travel as far from the wellbore.”

Whiting's new completion design has resulted in a 50% to 100% increase in IP rates for recent tests across Missouri Breaks, L&C, and Pronghorn, and a roughly 90% increase in the 30-day cumulative production at Missouri Breaks.

The point is, this type of experimentation is happening all over the US oil patch in every play. Whiting plans to try this technique in its Permian and Niobrara plays as well.

Newly public Antero Resources Corp. (NYSE: AR) is also experimenting, this time in the Marcellus shale.

The Denver independent (backed by War-burg Pincus' private equity) hit the ball out of the park with its public debut in October, closing the largest C-Corp energy IPO of the year, raising $1.57 billion, well above the original intended. Shares rose 18% the first day.

This pure-play brings to the table 6.3 trillion cubic feet equivalent of net, proved reserves, all in the Marcellus and Utica plays. It has 15 rigs working in the Marcellus and four in the Utica. In the latter, it has drilled seven of the top eight wells. They have ranged from 3,000 to 9,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Antero, too, reports experimentation is improving results. It is using shorter-stage lengths (SSLs) in its fracs, and since June 2013, it has implemented these in the Marcellus. The results? On 14 wells, the 24-hour peak rate averaged 18.4 million cubic feet a day—some 31% higher than it was for the overall Marcellus average of 14 million a day. EQT and Range Resources are reporting similar improvements with SSLs, Antero said on its website.

So yes, this boom has legs. It may sputter a bit here and there, but if commodity prices hold up, there's a very long way to go. Just do a little market research before you build a hotel in Cotulla.