2014 Great Year for Texas Oil
With plummeting oil prices garnering much of the recent energy news, it may be easy to forget that 2014 was a record-breaking year for the shale oil industry and Eagle Ford Play specifically.
Here are a some of the record-breaking news stories we covered during 2014:
- January began with predictions that 2014 would be a banner year for Eagle Ford Shale as analysts suggested that Texas could become the eighth largest oil producing country in the world passing Iraq, Kuwait, and Mexico within the year. This bold announcement was due in part because the EIA noted that U.S. oil production grew faster in 2013 than any other country in over two decades.
- By June, prediction became reality as Texas experienced production numbers reminiscent of the 1970’s and actually surpassed Iraq’s crude production.
- Another milestone quickly followed as Bloomberg announced in July that the U.S. passed Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer, with over ¼ of total crude production coming from Texas.
- Even as oil prices declined through the fall months, it was only good news for producers in Eagle Ford. Wood Mackenzie announced in November that Eagle Ford finally hit a long-anticipated milestone as crude production topped one billion barrels.
- In early December, the EIA reported that Texas had become the largest producer of shale natural gas.
While the low oil prices make the 2015 uncertain, most analysts predict that U.S. shale will remain strong.