Avoyelles oil driller sees bright future for Tuscaloosa It has...

Avoyelles oil driller sees bright future for Tuscaloosa

It has been over a year now now since oil companies began gobbling up leases in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale in Avoyelles, and already three wells are under way. Some industry experts expect a big increase in drilling to hit next year

Halcón Resources Chief Executive Officer Floyd Williams, who spoke at the Barclay’s CEO/Power Conference on Sept. 6, said he expects wells in the formation to produce the equivalent of 600,000 to 700,000 barrels per well.

Halcón began leasing last May in Avoyelles and expects to lease 100,000 to 150,000 acres total in several parishes, Williams said. The company has around 60,000 acres under lease, and the price has jumped from $250 an acre to around $1,000 in some of the more promising areas. When Halcon entered the Avoyelles market offering $500 an acre with 25 percent royalties, other companies upped their offers of $300 to match.

Halcon recently began drilling its first well in Poland, just west of Avoyelles Parish. EOG has already begun drilling the first Tuscaloosa Horizontal wells in Avoyelles, one at Brouillette and one at Hamburg. Both companies are out of Texas. Halcon is Spanish for "hawk", which is somewhat of a spinoff to the successful oil drilling company Petrohawk which shares founders.

Eight of the biggest players in natural gas have leased acreage in the Tuscaloosa, at least two of them in Avoyelles— but it’s impossible to say what will happen as the exploration companies test wells to attempt to pull oil from difficult and never tapped before resources under Avoyelles.

Most of the leases are now over a year old, and oil and gas companies typically sign three-year leases with options for two-year extensions, said Kirk Barrell, president of Amelia Resourcess LLC in The Woodlands, Texas.

“I think this play has to accelerate drastically next year,” Barrell said at.

Barrell said it’s an exciting time in the Tuscaloosa, a shale formation that stretches across the middle of Louisiana and is being targeted for oil production.

Some hope the Tuscaloosa will be like the Haynesville Shale in northwest Louisiana and the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.

Drilling activity in those shale formations, and others, led to big increases in the demand for skilled labor and services, such as housing, for those workers.

However, Louisiana Oil and Gas Association spokesman Ragan Dickens, who has twice addressed West Feliciana officials, said it’s too early to tell whether the Tuscaloosa will be similar to the Haynvesville Shale, a natural gas-producer that triggered a drilling frenzy that helped drive down natural gas prices to a point where producers are favoring oil plays.

“The jury’s still out,” Dickens said of Tuscaloosa’s outlook.

“There’s definitely resources in the ground … but they’re still trying to figure out how to extract those.”

People in that area, and Dickens as well, hope the Tuscaloosa will bring the same kind of economic impact that the Haynvesville did, Dickens said.

In West Feliciana officials have already met with representatives of Council Development Corp.’s Morgan City location and Baton Rouge Community College to offer training a nine-day course to prepare local workers for an entry-level job in the oilfield.


http://avoyellestoday.com/view/full_story/20170078/article-Avoyelles-oil-driller-sees-bright-future-for-Tuscaloosa-?