#278: What Still Drives Oil & Gas Markets? | David Blackmon on Energy, Policy & Demand

I mean, back in the day when...

the late 80s and early 90s when you were drilling Austin Chalkwells, you went down with your bit and you'd go horizontally to go into the vertical fractures.

Right.

But you didn't know where that drill bit was going, if it was going to come out of the ground, or you didn't know where that bit was going because you couldn't drive it.

But today, just very, very different.

Isn't that an amazing formation, the Austin Chalkwell?

It really is.

So I started in the industry in 79, and the first company I worked for, one of the early companies I worked for, was a significant producer, early producer in the Austin Chalk.

And here we are 44 years later.

And the Austin Chalk just keeps going through these periodic revivals.

Now people, again, are drilling just tremendous horizontal wells in the

chalk.

I'll tell you this, and you may know this.

You're smarter than me about all this stuff.

But I was talking to a guy, one of our new engineers, has drilled a lot of wells for Geo Southern, UPRC, all that.

But he said today's world...

In today's world, you can't tell whether or not a well is being drilled and fracked in the Eagleford formation or the Austin Chalk.

They are fracked identical.

You see the depth because one's above the other one.

But I always wondered about that.

You know, I wondered because Austin Chalk came in at a thousand barrels a day and they'd go down to a hundred barrels a day or 50 barrels a day within two months.

That's just how the Austin Chalk was.

So I thought if you went horizontally Normally, you have a bed, we'll say cobalt methane with the New Mexico stuff, but if you have the Permian Basin, it's an unconventional, it's 300 feet thick, two miles lateral, but that whole entire formation produces in the Permian where in the Austin Chalk, there's all these vertical fractures, and if you go down, you punch into one, two, three, four, you know, 10 of them or something, you're doing really well.

But the completion side, so let's kind of get – I know, David, we could talk forever.

I mean, back in the day when...

the late 80s and early 90s when you were drilling Austin Chalkwells, you went down with your bit and you'd go horizontally to go into the vertical fractures.

Right.

But you didn't know where that drill bit was going, if it was going to come out of the ground, or you didn't know where that bit was going because you couldn't drive it.

But today, just very, very different.

Isn't that an amazing formation, the Austin Chalkwell?

It really is.

So I started in the industry in 79, and the first company I worked for, one of the early companies I worked for, was a significant producer, early producer in the Austin Chalk.

And here we are 44 years later.

And the Austin Chalk just keeps going through these periodic revivals.

Now people, again, are drilling just tremendous horizontal wells in the

chalk.

I'll tell you this, and you may know this.

You're smarter than me about all this stuff.

But I was talking to a guy, one of our new engineers, has drilled a lot of wells for Geo Southern, UPRC, all that.

But he said today's world...

In today's world, you can't tell whether or not a well is being drilled and fracked in the Eagleford formation or the Austin Chalk.

They are fracked identical.

You see the depth because one's above the other one.

But I always wondered about that.

You know, I wondered because Austin Chalk came in at a thousand barrels a day and they'd go down to a hundred barrels a day or 50 barrels a day within two months.

That's just how the Austin Chalk was.

So I thought if you went horizontally Normally, you have a bed, we'll say cobalt methane with the New Mexico stuff, but if you have the Permian Basin, it's an unconventional, it's 300 feet thick, two miles lateral, but that whole entire formation produces in the Permian where in the Austin Chalk, there's all these vertical fractures, and if you go down, you punch into one, two, three, four, you know, 10 of them or something, you're doing really well.

But the completion side, so let's kind of get – I know, David, we could talk forever.