Austin Chalk Updates?

I also work on the service side and visit Conoco locations. Madtown is correct from what I've been told. Conoco is finishing up well in St. Francisville, moving 50 some-odd miles to East towards Clinton and drilling last of 4 wells. Completions to follow & then lay back and gather data.

All indications thus far have pointed toward "we plan to be here a while" -verbatim from Conoco Drilling Mgr.

Seems like a lot of the investment and excitement (on the service side) have died down as some investment backed service companies who opened up shop are beginning to close/ layoff. My own opinion is the Austin Chalk will be successful, but will takes years to develop with an underwhelming number of rigs running at any given time due to drastic increase in drilling efficiencies over the past few years.

There are also a handful of additional companies whom will become active soon in the area. ex. Petroquest.

I have looked at the chalk for two different companies and came to the same conclusion. Economics will be hard to get into place for it to be viable for long. There will always be a few good wells mixed in the mostly poor well. They make a ton of water and managing that water is too cost prohibitive. That coupled with poor wells intermixed is very bad. Sorry, as a Baton Rouge native I wanted to be able to work the play in my home state, but that just isn’t so.

Hope I am proven wrong by EOG, Marathon, and others.