While most everyone agrees the great shale boom in the US is still just getting started, there are those who believe we will not see anymore real game changers like the Bakken and the Eagle Ford, at least not in the near future. According to EOG Resources CEO Bill Thompson, both these shale plays are a once-in-a-lifetime event, and not so soon to be equaled.

The Bakken and Eagle Ford currently produce as much as 75 percent of all directional drilling in the US. The recent reduction in estimates for the Monterey Shale Formation, and in the Marcellus and the Utica as well, could mean a significant reduction in shale output for the US as a whole. remember, however, this means a pullback from unimaginable high in  the past few years.

“We don’t see another play out there that’s like an Eagle Ford or Bakken that will maintain this tremendous growth that we have had going forward. So production we believe is beginning to slow," says Thomas. In 2012, production was about 1-million b/d per year and then last year was a little over 800,000 b/d per year. We are looking at maybe this year 750, maybe in 2016 650,000 b/d per year and really over a fairly short period of time we really believe that the U.S. will be in kind of a very low growth mode. So oil is not going to just go on forever because there is not really another Eagle Ford or Bakken out there.”

Relevance for years to come

But Thomas does not downplay the importance of these two formations both in the past and for years to come. The EIA says that production in the Bakken has now passed the 1 million barrels per day mark, and could continue even higher when the Keystone XL pipeline has been completed. 

Along with the 2 million barrels of oil per day proposed to flow through the pipeline from the oil sands of canada to the Gulf Coast of the United States, another 800,000 barrels per day are expected to flow from the Bakken itself.

Continental Resources, the biggest producer in the Bakken, reports that the region has now passed the 1 billion barrel mark overall, a major milestone.

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