Investing in the Paris Basin Shale Oil Play
The Paris Basin shale oil play in France has the potential to be ten times the size of the Bakken play in North America, and some high profile exploration is beginning soon.
Estimates range from just a few to many tens of billions of barrels of oil in the Paris Basin. Much like the North American shale plays, these formations have been drilled through many times – there are over 1000 wells drilled into the Basin – so exploration risk is low. It’s completion risk – how to best unlock the oil from the rock – that is the main risk.
So there is a lot of data, which makes exploration much less risky. It also means that local residents are used to having oil wells drilled in the region – unlike New York State ;).
Activity by explorers in this part of France has been growing, and is now hitting a fever pitch. A huge land race is underway, with applications for more than 1.6 million acres pending approval for several companies, including Toreador Resources (TRGL-NASD) in the US, Vermillion Energy (VET.UN-TSX) and Realm Energy (RLM-TSXv) in Canada.
Exploration – real drilling – in the Paris Basin will ramp up this fall. Toreador Resources Corporation is the purest play. In May they announced an exploration deal with Hess Corporation (HES-NYSE) that could be worth as much as $265 million for 50% of Toreador’s 600,000 acres in the play. They spud their first well into the play in Q4 2010. It will be one of the most watched wells in the world.
Canada’s Vermilion Energy has also acquired acreage in the play and begun exploration activities. Vermilion is already recognized as France’s largest oil producer.
Craig Steinke, Executive Chairman for Realm Energy, says “The Paris Basin is arguably the most exciting shale play in Europe right now. We expect to acquire a good-sized position in this play.”
As I wrote about earlier, many of the European shale gas plays are being bought up by the majors, there are intermediate and junior producers in the game, which should keep news flow on the play steady for retail investors.
When this happened in North America, there was huge wealth creation as the juniors and intermediates were small enough that their stocks could benefit from a productive land position.
Like the big North American shale oil plays that enriched investors, the Paris Basin has big reserve potential, good existing well data, and a local population that’s familiar with drilling.
Hopefully, history will repeat itself.
*Keith Schaefer owns Toreador
Hello, this is Keith Schaefer, editor and publisher of The Oil & Gas Investments Bulletin. I started my subscription service in mid-2009 because I could see there was no place where retail investors could go to easily find which oil and gas companies were creating huge shareholder wealth by using exciting new technologies, such as horizontal drilling, fracing and 3D seismic.
These companies are increasing cash flows – and stock prices – by finding ways to get more oil and gas out of the ground. And junior and intermediate producers – $2-$20 stocks – are leading the way.
I find the leaders in the new plays that are using these technologies. My research is finding higher and higher flow rates from new wells in old formations as management teams fine tune their use of these new technologies.
It’s amazing how technology is lowering operating costs – and increasing profits – for many publicly traded energy companies.
I find the ones who have the capital and the knowledge to be the fastest growing in their area – this usually means they have a large undeveloped land position in an area where either production costs are very low or production rates can be very high. They are covered by several research analysts, so there is research support and institutional money flow behind them.