In south Texas, a wide band of rocks stretches from the Mexican border all the way to western Louisiana, forming the highly productive Eagle Ford Group. These formations, made up primarily of shale and mudstone, are some of the most prolific oil and gas-producing rocks in the United States.
The Eagle Ford Group was also one of the first formations to be unconventionally drilled as part of the U.S. Shale Revolution, and since then, tens of thousands of wells have been drilled.
The USGS has assessed recoverable oil and gas resources in parts of the Eagle Ford Group several times, with the most recent assessment in 2018. In 2019, the USGS built upon the 2018 petroleum assessment with an assessment of water and proppant requirements and water production that would potentially be associated with producing the undiscovered oil and gas resource.
In 2018, the USGS assessed potential quantities of oil and gas resources that could be produced in the Eagle Ford Group, estimating a mean of 8.5 billion barrels of oil, 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.9 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. This assessment was unique, because it ranks in the top five of assessments in both the oil and gas categories.
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Image via USGS.