More on Austin Chalk . . .

Our lawyer says there is no fracking going on in Pointe Coupee. I sense that it is too deep to get done.

There is horizontal drilling and there is going to be a lot of that in the Austin Chalk. The test wells in Avoyelles are all horizontal wells. Some of them are posting laterals or horizontal distances of up to a mile or more. and there is said to be some new technology in seismic data reading. Really don't care as long as they sign up for a lease.

While the long laterals are good for the exploration and development it is bad for the land owner. It means the exploration companies want rectangular shaped units that are basically long and narrow. This takes up more area, ergo less production per square foot, royalties are spread over a larger area, or less per square foot. So the land owner suffers at the expense of the developer. I foresee fights at the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) over the size and shape of the units. Gonna get interesting I am sure.

Mean while I have found the Lebarre well on Google Earth which is directly south of the plantation, I estimate about three miles. The Lebarre well is considered a Morganza Field well, produces about 230 to 300 barrels of oil and gobs of gas each month. It was a producer that quit. And it is really a Tuscaloosa Trend well, not an Austin Chalk well.

In 2005 it was "recompleted" at a different Tuscaloosa Trend reservoir at 18,200 feet vertical well. However, it took three tries to recomplete the well but has been producing since 2005. It is kind of hard to imagine a well that is over three miles deep and the surface elevation is around 30 feet above sea level. Amazing!

I also located the Wilbert Well back of Stonewall Plantation, over grown and shut in. I wonder if it is worth "recompleting at a new reservoir level of the Tuscaloosa Trend" or even a location to go back in and to explore the Austin Chalk. I am told that (a) developers do not like to go back into wells and (b) their drilling processes really messed up the Austin Chalk as they went by it (too much mud packing the zone). I would imagine that there is a consideration of doing that but . . . As a matter of interest it was the well in which we had about four acres of production, our parents got a nice piece of change for about a year, then it sanded over and no one recompleted the well. It was a Moore-Sams Field well.

I urged the family to get on with the lease as I am afraid the price of oil is beginning to drop. If it gets to low, they wont lease and we will not get any street money!