"A mighty Mississippi is starting to flow in the middle of Oklahoma's resurgent oil and gas industry.
This potential river of oil occupies what is called the Mississippi Lime - porous limestone formations in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. The liquids-rich region, considered tapped out by vertical drilling decades ago, has been yielding reservoirs to horizontal operators such as SandRidge, Chesapeake, Devon and Tulsa-based Eagle Energy LLC during the past two years.
"I think it's probably the hottest play going in the country," Eagle CEO Steve Antry said. "We're producing 4,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is nice." ..........................
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The irony is that these "new" reserves actually lie slightly below formations that were big producers 100 years ago. Phillips Petroleum Co., for instance, made its name in the nearby Burbank Field, on the eastern edge of the play that includes Osage, Pawnee, Kay, Garfield, Woods, Alfalfa and other northern Oklahoma counties.
"It's sort of amazing that all of this has been sitting there and waiting for horizontal drilling," Antry said. "The vertical wells hardly drained any of that."
