Eagle Ford Shale Photography LLC

Eagle Ford Shale Photography LLC is a South Texas based company offering contract photography and other services for the oil and gas industry.  Our services include industrial photography and digital photo processing, as well as other oilfield information services as requested by our clients. For example, we can measure drilling or construction site locations and overlay basic reference measurements on photos of specific sites for planning purposes. We also offer stock photography of the oil and gas industry in South Texas, including photos of upstream and midstream oil and gas activities.

We offer extremely reasonable rates for traveling to any location in the Eagle Ford Shale to perform our services.

Safety Is Our Highest Priority

We have worked in the oil and gas industry for more than twenty years and agree to follow all company rules concerning PPE, H2S certification and minimum liability insurance coverage. While photographing active oil and gas locations, we always wear steel toe boots, a hard hat, hearing protection, safety glasses, and fire retardant clothing if required. Our goal is to safely provide you with the highest quality images with minimal disruption to your day to day activities.

Over the next few months we will be adding dozens of new photographs of oil and gas exploration and production activity to our catalog. Feel free to contact us at the e-mail link on the bottom of this page to inquire about our oilfield photography services or to purchase a photo.

Note: You can click on any of the images on this site to view at full size. High resolution copies of all photos are available for sale by contacting us below.

A Weatherford Pump Jack on an EOG Resources well In The Eagle Ford Shale.

Some Information On The New Oil Discovery In South Texas

What is the Eagle Ford Shale? It is one of the most significant crude oil and natural gas discoveries ever found in North America. The layer of rock in which oil and gas has been discovered has been known about for decades, but only in the last couple of decades has the right  technology existed to make drilling the shale profitable.

Many millions of years ago, (about 90 million years ago during the late Cretaceous age,) a thick layer of marine sediment, rich in organic matter, was laid down over the area which is now South Texas. Stretching from near the Louisiana border, across Texas, and even into Mexico, what once was marine muck is now a layer of shale rock buried up to 15,000 feet thick. The Eagle Ford Shale is so rich in organic matter that over time, through the process of organic decay and the earth’s heat and pressure, large quantities of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas formed within it.

The Eagle Ford Shale is known as a “mother rock” or “source rock” by geologists. Over millions of years the petroleum hydrocarbons emanating from the Eagle Ford Shale “source rock” have migrated upwards towards the surface and collected into geologic “traps” or pockets of porous rock such as sandstone. Beginning in the past century, oil and gas exploration companies or “wildcatters” began searching for and finding many of these hidden pockets of oil and gas,  making some incredible oil fields in South Texas. Most of these old oil fields have been in a steady process of decline since the 1970′s. In the meantime, the source of much of this oil and gas, the Eagle Ford shale, lay quietly below, waiting to be developed when the right technology came along.  The Eagle Ford Shale source rock was largely overlooked as a productive formation  until around 2008, when Petrohawk Energy successfully completed  horizontally drilled wells in LaSalle and McMullen counties. Going against conventional wisdom, which said that oil could not be produced in any great quantity from sale due to the fact that the rock was dense and lacked “porosity,”  Petrohawk decided to try hydraulic fracturing to break apart the shale deep underground so that more oil and gas would flow into the wellbore.

Below: The sun rises over a pumpjack in the Eagle Ford Shale.

Petrohawk Energy’s first two wells, the Dora Martin 1-H and the South Texas Syndicate 241-1H exceeded all expectations and petroleum engineers soon realized that the same rock formation in which the wells were completed, the Eagle Ford Shale, was nearly homogenous across an area more than four hundred miles long by over fifty miles wide. Companies such as Petrohawk immediately began sending oil and gas landmen into the area to stealthily lease up acreage without creating a frenzy that drove lease prices up. In a stroke of sheer genius, the company leased up nearly half a million acres in just under a year. Much of the Eagle Ford shale was leased for under $800 an acre, far below what it is worth today.

As word of Petrohawk’s success came out of South Texas, other companies with experience in horizontal drilling, such as EOG Resources and Chesapeake Energy, (both leaders in the Barnett Shale play, a similar formation,) began to also lease up thousands of acres. As more wells were drilled it was soon realized that while the rock formation was very similar across South Texas, “all Eagle Ford Shale acreage was not created equally.” A “sweet spot” across the center of the play, between the “dry gas” and “black oil” windows was discovered. In this liquids rich zone it was discovered that large volumes of high gravity oil and condensate could be produced due to the fact that highly pressured natural gas helped force more liquids out of the tight shale rock. Currently the “volatile oil” and “wet gas and condensate” windows are the hottest areas of the Eagle Ford shale for drilling. Most of the Eagle Ford shale photos on this site were taken in the “volatile oil” window of the play. Thanks again for visiting site. We hope you enjoy our photography. Please feel free to join our site and comment on photos and articles. Our services also include contract photography in South Texas.

About Us: We are a South Texas based business offering reasonable rates for professional photography of the oil and gas industry. In addition, we are offering a new service to farmers and ranchers whereby we create a historical archive of how your property appears now, to preserve for future generations, before changes to your land occur due to construction, pipelines, etc. Eagle Ford Shale Photography LLC can capture HD video or still photos of old barns, homesteads and other historical objects which may be disturbed by oil and gas activity. Contact us at survivalstore@gmail.com for pricing.

More Photos: See the right margin of this page for links to more Eagle Ford Shale photos.

“Have Nikon, Will Travel!”  Contact Us To See If We Can Help With Your Project.

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