Recovery rates for shale oil in the Eagle Ford to Rise to 20% ?

There has been a flurry of articles on Devon Energy's acquisition of a large amount of acreage in the Eagle Ford shale play. Shale Energy Insider has an example - Devon Energy to acquires assets in Eagle Ford for US 6bn. More at Reuters - Devon strikes Texas oil deal, plans to sell assets and Proactive investors - Oil Column: Eagle Ford shale to account for 15% of BHP Billiton’s cash flows.

Devon Energy has reached an agreement to acquire GeoSouthern Energy’s assets in the Eagle Ford oil play for $6 billion. The acquired assets include current production of 53,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day and 82,000 net acres with at least 1,200 undrilled locations. The risked recoverable resource is estimated at 400 million barrels of oil equivalent, the majority of which is proved reserves.

The BS had an interesting snippet as it considered the implications of the deal for BHP, noting a massive increase in the recovery rate predicted for oil in the shale formation. Whether or not this is actually feasible I'm unsure - BHP US shale outlook improves.

The potential jump comes from much-improved expectations for how much oil the company can expect to get from its Texas holdings. BHP's partner in the Eagle Ford holdings, Devon Energy, has revealed that it expects recovery rates of 20 per cent of the oil in the shale, up from previous forecasts of only 7 per cent.

Those recovery rates not only bode well for cash output, but also in offsetting BHP's production costs. The figures were released as part of Devon Energy's $US6 billion ($A6.53 billion) purchase of BHP's 50 per cent partner GeoSouthern.