The Wolfcamp Delaware basin, a shale play straddling the Texas border with New Mexico, could be the next big deal, analysis published Wednesday from IHS found.
"The Wolfcamp Delaware has promise, but right now, it is considered an adolescent in terms of its maturity," Reed Olmstead, manager of the North American analytics at IHS Energy, said in an emailed statement.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a drilling productivity report output from key shale basins is expected to dip lower starting in July. Low crude oil prices leaves companies with less money to spend on exploration and production and many key shale states are feeling the impact.
North Dakota's rig count is hovering near all-time lows and production from April, the last full month for which data are available, is down nearly 2 percent from the previous month to 1.17 million barrels per day. An all-time high of 1.2 million bpd was reached in December.
IHS finds that Wolfcamp Delaware has the potential to support steady production even during the weak crude oil market. Compared with other shale basins, this one has some of the best normalized production rates in the country.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration ranks the shale basin within the Permian reserve area among the more lucrative in the nation. A 2013 report from Forbes found drillers are employing the same techniques in the Texas shale as they did in North Dakota and another major shale play in Texas, Eagle Ford. The report notes, however, that Wolfcamp Delaware may hold several times more oil in potential reserves than either the Bakken shale in North Dakota or Eagle Ford.