With oil prices staying above $60 a barrel for several months, U.S. drillers are breaking production records each week, mostly thanks to the Permian in West Texas and New Mexico.
Recently, however, some companies have started to test their fracking capabilities on oil fields that most agree reached their peak production decades ago, Oilprice.com reports.
Authorities and industry officials in Louisiana believe there’s a resurgence in one of the old oil-producing areas in the state and want to support investment in the region.
While companies test the geology and production/decline rates of old fields drilled with new technology, Louisiana lawmakers have said they hope that the Austin Chalk resurgence could revive the state’s economy.
The Austin Chalk, which stretches from Texas to the Gulf of Mexico and cuts through much of central Louisiana, is one of those formations that was “hot” back in the 1990s, but has been forgotten since then, especially after hydraulic fracturing shifted the industry attention to other areas in the United States—the Bakken in the north, and the Eagle Ford and the Permian in Texas.
Companies have started to drill wells in the Austin Chalk, where the number of drilling rigs has doubled over the past six months to 14, and oil production surged to 57,000 barrels per day last year, up from just 3,000 bpd five years ago.
