What Is The Haynesville Shale?

The Haynesville Shale is found in Northwest Louisiana East Texas and part of Arkansas. It is also referred to as the Shreveport shale. By some accounts it may the the fourth largest shale gas field in the world. Already the Haynesville Shale formation is making a lot of people rich, including landowners who own the mineral rights. Some experts believe that it could produce from twenty to forty trillion cubic feet of natural gas. One reason the Haynesville shale is such a high producer of natural gas is the fact that the shale is thick highly pressured. It is around two hundred feet thick in the Elm Grove field. For this reason a lot of gas can be packed into the shale.
The Haynesville shale is a dense, low porosity shale or sedimentary rock that was deposited in the late Jurassic period approximately one hundred and seventy million years ago. It is grey black to blackish green in color and is rich in organic matter. This organic matter has, though a process called thermogenic and boigenic action, caused natural gas to be produced. This natural gas is locked up tight in the shale, which is not normally a reservoir rock. Shale formations like the Haynesville shale are normally source rocks. In fact the Haynesville Shale is a source rock for oil and gas in Northwest Louisiana. Not until the advent of directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing did shale gas formations like the Haynesville shale become viable for production. Much of the current activity in the Haynesville shale is located around Bossier, Caddo, Red River, Webster, Natchitoches, Sabine and Caldwell parishes in Louisiana. Some of the major players in the Haynesville shale are Petrohawk Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Plains Exploration, Southwestern Energy, EXCO Resources among others.
For investors this may be the time to get in on the Haynesville shale play as stock prices in the above companies has fallen due to lower natural gas prices.
For more on the Haynesville Shale see: http://www.ehelpfulltips.com