Another South Texas shale play in Pearsall formation

Fuel Fix:

The Eagle Ford Shale is a behemoth oil and gas field in both size and profits.

But it’s not the only shale in South Texas.

Oil and gas companies are hunting hydrocarbons in several other geologic formations including the Pearsall Shale, which so far has 22 producing wells and is driving some mineral leasing in the region.

“It’s early days. The Pearsall is emerging,” said Peggy Williams, editorial director with Hart Energy. “People are working on it and it could develop into something, but it’s not as fully commercial as the Eagle Ford is at this point.”

The Eagle Ford is a 50-mile-wide swath of shale that runs from the Mexican border to East Texas, with more than 5,400 wells permitted so far. It appears to be the mother lode — the largest and most consistent South Texas formation holding the most oil and gas.

But the Pearsall Shale is the rock formation that many say is most like the Eagle Ford. It’s deeper and older than the Eagle Ford, but was also deposited in the Cretaceous Period when much of Texas was covered by a shallow sea.

Eaglebine: ‘The next thing’ for drilling companies

It was long assumed that the Pearsall contained only natural gas until Oklahoma-based Cheyenne Petroleum Co. drilled a Pearsall well in 2011 that produced crude oil. So, like the Eagle Ford, the Pearsall also has “windows” where more oil or more gas can be produced.

The research firm Drillinginfo.com, which tracks wells around the world, has identified 22 wells with Pearsall production — mostly natural gas producers in Dimmit and Maverick counties that were drilled in 2010 and 2011.

But along the county lines in northeastern La Salle and southeastern Frio counties, Pearsall wells have produced more oil.
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In the 1970s analyst said that the US was the Saudi Arabia of shale oil, if we could just find a way to produce it from those tight formations.  George Mitchell solved that problem and since then we have been finding several productive fields and would find even more if the Obama administration would get out of the way of drilling on federal sites.

The Cline formation in West Texas looks like it will be even bigger than the Eagle Ford.

The Pearsall formation is much deeper than the Eagle Ford and you have to go through the Eagle Ford to get to it, so the wells are more expensive, but the production clearly seems to justify the added expense.  Many of the leases in the area are limited in depth to that of the Eagle Ford which means drillers have to obtain new leases from land owners to explore the Pearsall.