When Johnny Cash sang about bad news traveling like wildfire and good news traveling slowly, he might as well have been singing about the recent flurry of quarterly reports. Capex has been slashed, drilling programs cut, workers laid off and operators sent to look for buyers for their assets.

The bad news of this commodity price downturn has indeed spread like wildfire. In the Eagle Ford, at least, there is some good news.

“For the Eagle Ford, which is a pretty huge contributor to production in the U.S., we don’t see a dramatic decline,” said Raphael Hudson, director, upstream research at Stratas Advisors, a Hart Energy company. “We see an attenuation of the growth rate in production, but we don’t see it going down in the near term.”

Hudson noted the play’s “resilience,” and shared some information on what makes it so indomitable.

1. Permits are declining, but not by much (relatively). Permits approved in the Eagle Ford counties of Dimmit, Gonzales, Karnes, La Salle and McMullen took a steep drop in November to 343 from 527 the month before, when oil prices dropped dramatically, according to data from the Texas Railroad Commission. In December, permits were flat relative to November, and only dropped by 20. There was a steeper drop in January, down to 216, but “companies still have drilled-and-awaiting completion inventory that they can tap into,” Hudson said.

2. Rig count has not declined the way oil prices have. “The peak rig count over the past three months was 203,” Hudson said. Most recently, the rig count in the play stood at 175, according to Hart’s Unconventional Activity Tracker. “We’re talking about a 10% decline, which is not nearly the magnitude of the decline of the oil price,” Hudson said. “There’s a lot of talk about how production’s going to fall off a cliff in the near term. At least, in the Eagle Ford, we don’t see that happening.” Hudson pointed to more efficient wells, which will attenuate production decline.

3. Cutting capex doesn’t just indicate a low price environment. It also means more efficient wells. Well costs have been declining at a rate of 10% to 15% every year, and that’s been in an environment of about $100 oil, Hudson said. “If this year’s wells are more productive than last year’s wells, then the fewer wells that you are bringing online will not necessarily lead a drop in production commensurate to the drop in well numbers.” In other words, more efficient wells protect against huge production declines that might happen as a result of scaled-back drilling.

4. Oil prices are higher in the Eagle Ford relative to other plays. Williston Basin posted prices are still hovering in the $30-to-$40 range, Hudson said, while WTI recently started climbing back into the 50s. “Consider that transportation costs are probably going to be higher in the Bakken, that’s probably going to dictate part of the reason for the discount,” Hudson said. “But if you’re earning $13 more per barrel, as an operator, what are you going to do? What are you going to cut first? Is it going to be Bakken or is it going to be Eagle Ford?”

5. New entrants are eager to make it in the play. Hudson noted that last year saw several new large operators enter the play, including Devon and Encana. “These two operators are going full-speed ahead,” Hudson said. “You’ve got lower well costs. You’ve got productive wells. You’ve got a fairly favorable benchmark. So all of those would dictate against a dramatic decline that you would assume given these announcements of lower capex numbers. We have cut our outlook for 2015 and 2016 Eagle Ford oil and condensate production by 60,000 barrels per day and 106,000 barrels per day, respectively, but still see production growing by about 3% a year over the next two years.”