Well in Rapides producing oil, liquid natural gas

A newly drilled well in northwest Rapides Parish that’s producing hundreds of barrels per day of oil and liquid natural gas could be the first of many in Louisiana’s central parish that uses horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” reports The (Alexandria) Town Talk. The well—named Bentley Lumber 34H #1 and operated by Indigo Minerals—bores thousands of feet down in land owned by third-generation forester Roy O. Martin III and his family, which own hundreds of thousands acres of Louisiana forestland. Most of the Martin land is pristine timber acreage, which supplies the family’s many wood-products businesses. But about two miles under much of that land, trapped in dense shale rock, rests rich deposits of oil and other fuels that America runs on. A swath of oil-rich land, which cuts across central Louisiana and through some of Mississippi, and includes fields north of Baton Rouge, is called the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale. Martin, whose family owns half of Indigo Minerals, and other owners of the company that drilled the Bentley well call it Louisiana Eagle Ford, a continuation of the oil- and natural gas-rich Texas Eagle Ford to the southwest. “We’re excited about [the drilling],” Martin tells the newspaper. “We’re also creating jobs.” Check out the full story here, and read a recent Business Report cover story by Penny Font on the potential of the Tuscaloosa Shale in the Capital Region here.