Eagle Ford: A Stacked Play Like The Bakken -- Surprised? Not Me

Richard Zeits over at SeekingAlpha:

The Eagle Ford may soon become yet another major shale play in the U.S. to be developed using stacked laterals in more than one horizon.

So far, operators in the play have targeted only one "landing zone" within the Eagle Ford for the placement of horizontal wells. In those areas where the Eagle Ford is thick, this landing zone has often been chosen closer to the bottom of the formation, in the Lower Eagle Ford (the shale's thickness varies across the play, from less than 100 feet to over 350 feet; lateral placement also varies depending on the geology in each specific location).

Most recently however, some operators are suggesting that in those areas where the formation is thicker, the Eagle Ford may be successfully developed by placing laterals simultaneously in the Lower Eagle Ford and the Upper Eagle Ford, similar to how this is being done in the Three Forks interval in the Williston Basin. While the benefit of gaining additional economic drilling locations within the same acreage is obvious, another important (and less trivial) upside the industry is focusing on is the potential "synergy" between adjacent fracture stimulations. 

The hope is that the overlapping and intertwined fracture networks from wells located in the Upper Eagle Ford and Lower Eagle Ford would provide a EUR uplift for all wells in the array.