The key to the shale boom is not only horizontal drilling; it is the ability to do multistage fracs with separation between the stages. “Just look at what this has done for our industry. It gives me goose bumps,” says Swift Energy Co. president Bruce Vincent, whose company is making hay in the Eagle Ford shale, Olmos and Escondido formations in South Texas.

Vincent, outgoing chair of the IPAA, and many others extolled the benefits of the Eagle Ford and discussed its challenges at Hart Energy’s 2nd annual DUG-Eagle Ford Conference and Exhibition last month in San Antonio. Some 4,000 people registered.

This fall, about $1.1 billion will be added to the Texas Rainy Day Fund thanks to rising income from the booming Eagle Ford, Texas Railroad Commission chair Elizabeth Ames Jones told attendees. Eagle Ford production is now approaching 125,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Various tallies indicate from 180 to 200 rigs are currently turning to the right in the play, with many more to come.

The Eagle Ford has gross potential of 25 billion barrels of oil equivalent or 150 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Pioneer Natural Resources will ramp up from 12 rigs now to 19 by 2014, chief operating officer Tim Dove told attendees. It has 2,000 locations ahead of it and an estimated 700 million BOE of resource to tap (24 million BOE proved so far).

“The economics of our wells are simply stellar. They pay out in 11 months.”

New shale powerhouse BHP Billiton-Petrohawk will increase its drilling pace now that it has more capital behind it, said Dick Stone - burner, COO.

“We’re raring to go,” said Marathon Oil Corp. COO Dave Roberts. MRO will have 10 rigs in the play by year-end and will add a rig per month starting in January. “This is indeed a revolution that most of us cannot comprehend, based on what we were taught in college. This is a million-barrel-a-day oil field.”

Good news is flowing from other shale plays too. North Dakota’s Bakken shale is now beyond 400,000 barrels a day and, with that of neighboring Montana, it’s 450,000 a day for the surging play. More than 1,650 Marcellus wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania. They produced 432.5 billion cubic feet of gas in first-half 2011, per Pennsylvania authorities—a 60% increase over the last six months of the prior year.

These statistics showcase the positive effects of shale oil and gas drilling. We will see even more in 2012, as the technology sweeps into more oily plays and mature basins that have not yet seen the golden touch of a multistage frac in a horizontal wellbore.

Some optimists now predict that in five years or so, the U.S. will be the top oil producer in the world. Goldman Sachs has forecast U.S. production could be as high as 10.7 million barrels of oil a day by 2017—more than Saudi Arabia or Russia—and more than the U.S. has ever produced in a day. That’s remarkable.

Experts say we will see an incremental 1 million barrels a day out of the Bakken, maybe another million out of the Eagle Ford, and who knows how much from the Midcontinent’s oily plays now being rejuvenated by multistage fracs. That’s right. After a 40-year plunge in oil production, the U.S, is on the upswing, surprising the peak-oil theorists.

The rig count in most shale plays continues to climb, and the overall U.S. rig count hit a three-year high in October—even as oil has tumbled and natural gas cannot get above $4 for long.

The Jefferies & Co. E&P analysts have an explanation: the enormous success of the shale plays has broken the time-honored link between oil and gas prices and the amount of E&P spending. I would add that ample JV money from national oil company partners is another reason that spending remains robust.

“The superior risk/reward ratio in unconventional drilling is causing companies to devote more of their resources to developing assets organically versus through acquisitions,” Jefferies noted in a recent report. “This trend should help insulate 2012 drilling capex from a decline in commodity prices, excepting another credit crisis.” The firm also said, “Rising second-mover costs in unconventional plays has further intensified this trend.”

The latest data show that U.S. gas production is up by almost 5 billion cubic feet a day.

In fact, E&Ps may cut their capex only if there is some sort of banking or credit crisis that leads to borrowing-base curtailments, Jefferies said in its report.

And so as Thanksgiving approaches, let’s thank our lucky stars. Here in America, corporations can choose to spend as they see fit. We are blessed with an abundance of natural resources that can fuel economic growth and create jobs. This is an uplifting time for the oil and gas industry—and it should be recognized as such by the whole country.

For more commentary from Leslie Haines, see the blog "Leslie's Notebook" at OilandGasInvestor.com.