shale gas play

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The term “play” is used in the oil and gas industry to refer to a geographic area which has been targeted for exploration due to favorable geoseismic survey results, well logs or production results from a new or “wildcat well” in the area. An area comes into play when it is generally recognized that there is an economic quantity of oil or gas to be found. Oil and gas companies will send out professional “land men”  who research property records at the local courthouses and after having located landowners who own the mineral rights in the play area, will offer them an oil and gas lease deal.  Competition for acreage usually increases based on how hot the play is in terms of production from discovery wells in the area. The more oil and  gas there is to be had, the higher the lease payments per acre are.
The size of an oil or gas play may be only a few hundred acres or as is the case with the Eagle Ford shale, Haynesville shale, Barnett shale and Marcellus shale, cover hundreds of thousands of acres over a wide region.
A shale gas play, such as the ones mentioned above, is simply a discovery of oil or gas in shale rock that is significant enough for oil and gas companies to launch a campaign of leasing and subsequent exploration. In the case of the Eagle Ford shale it is turning out to be both a shale gas play and and oil play.

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