David Roberts Jr., executive vice president and chief operating officer of Marathon Oil Corp., is not shy expressing unbridled excitement about his company’s potential in the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas.

"We think there is going to be superior take-away capacity in this basin within a relatively short period of time, which will make this crude look more like LLS (Louisiana Light Sweet) instead of WTI (West Texas Intermediate), which is obviously a benefit to everybody in this particular room," Roberts said on Oct. 12, the final day of Hart Energy's Developing Unconventional Gas Eagle Ford conference in San Antonio.

"But more importantly, [the Eagle Ford] is a million-barrels-a-day oil field. For those who thought the oil story in the United States was over, the Eagle Ford says that’s not true. This is going to be the biggest land-based oil field in the United States in a relatively short amount of time."

Marathon enhanced its position in the Eagle Ford with a recently announced $3.5-billion agreement with Hilcorp Resources Holdings to purchase assets in the play. Roberts said the acquisition is scheduled to close on Nov. 1, 2011.

As of June 1, Hilcorp was operating six wells in the play. By the Nov. 1 closing date, eight wells will be running, ramping up to nine by the end of 2011, Roberts said. Two Hilcorp frac crews are currently working in the Eagle Ford, and Marathon expects to add a third in January 2012 and a fourth in June 2012.

Production as of June 1 was 7,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d). By Nov. 1, Roberts expects production to increase to 12,000 boe/d and 13,000 boe/d by year's-end.

"From the Hilcorp acreage alone, we expect to be able to generate roughly 80,000 barrels a day equivalent in five years. When we look at this number (80,000), I think that's a baseline. I think we'll do better because I think the reservoir is better than we even anticipated," Roberts stated. "Marathon will be committing on the order of $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year to this play frankly as far as the eye can see. It's that big, it's that good and that important."

The company's estimated annual CAPEX during the next five years is $4.5 billion to $5 billion, Roberts said, adding that "roughly 70% of those dollars are going to be directed toward our growth businesses, which are largely U.S. unconventional -- and fully half of that will be directed toward the Eagle Ford."

Roberts said Marathon has "literally remade itself once in the last decade," and that he thinks the company is on the cusp of doing it again with the emergence of unconventionals in the United States.

"Where do we find ourselves today? We find ourselves to be a company that's very strongly liquids-focused," he said. "The unconventional resource renaissance in the United States was a way forward for us and has basically created the new future for Marathon on a go-forward basis."

Marathon currently has almost 1 million acres and about 9,000 wells in the United States in four major plays -- Eagle Ford, Anadarko Woodford, Niobrara and Bakken. Roberts expects Marathon to add another 200,000 barrels a day to its productive capacity by 2016.

In the four shales, Marathon has a resource potential of almost 1.5 billion barrels. "That's important because Marathon’s total proved resources today are only 1.6 billion barrels," he said.

"We focused very early on the Bakken in North Dakota, but realized very quickly that we think the premiere play in the United States in the unconventional universe is the Eagle Ford shale. It's not very often that we see plays in the United States where every well we drill is at least 1,000 barrels a day along with associated gas," Roberts said.

"So we're very excited when we think of this opportunity. We'll be 90 wells into this play when we acquire Hilcorp in the next couple of weeks. We've got at least 1,200 wells to go there, so you can understand why we're excited about what we see on a go-forward basis."

Contact the author, Mike Madere, at mmadere@hartenergy.com.