EagleFordShale.com was recently interviewed by Bisnow reporter Greg Miller for placement in the company's Energy Newsletter. The following article was included in the January 5, 2011 email:
WEBSITE SERVES THE NEW WILD WEST
Like a mining boomtown in the Old West, the Eagle Ford shale play in South Texas has seen an enormous population explosion. And now a Houston-based website has taken on the role of the saloon where people come together to exchange information. (The site has no sarsparilla or fighting over fixed card games, that we know of.)
We snapped EagleFordShale.com operations director R.T. Dukes this week at his office in the Rice Village area. R.T., a graduate of Texas A&M and a former consultant with Wood Mackenzie’s upstream energy group. He tells us the site’s focus is to keep people apprised of what's happening in the play. The site, which is getting 45,000 visitors each month, includesjob listings and a marketplace. R.T. says his company is expanding to serve more shale regions. Look for a Bakken site to launch later this quarter and a Marcellus site to follow in Q2.
EagleFordShale.com was founded by Mississippi State petroleum engineer Kenny DuBose, shown here sporting his alma mater’s hat on a South Texas frack job in fall 2010. Kenny owns the site’s parent company, KED Interests. There are now about 265 rigs working in the Eagle Ford area. R.T. says a rule of thumb is to count about 50 active jobs for every rig and 150 indirect jobs. The town of Carrizo Springs alone has grown from 10,000 in 2010 to 20,000 today. The town sits in Dimmit County, which has 23 rigs, which means 1,150 active rig jobs alone. It has been estimated that the Eagle Ford has added approximately 12,000 jobs with thousands more on the way.
The site also has listings for scarce lodging. Hotels, trailers, RVs, apartments, and rental properties are getting harder and harder to find. For a small fee, sellers can obtain an area of the site and manage it themselves. It also links to hotels, man camps, and extended-stay facilities. Though non-energy industries are working fast to respond, progress is still painfully slow. Developers are buying large acres of land but construction is well behind demand. (It's ok, we'll rough it, sleep under the stars, like our forefathers... as long as there's wireless.) On top of that, completed buildings have been sitting for weeks waiting for water and electricity to reach them.
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