Marathon Oil grew Eagle Ford production from approximately 15,000 boe/d in December 2011 to more than 65,000 boe/d in December 2012. That's blistering growth! Production literally grew 50% in the quarter from 40,000 boe/d in Q3 to 60,000 boe/d in Q4. It's not going to slow in 2013 either. January production averaged 70,000 boe/d.

2012 highlights for Marathon Oil included:

• Expanded midstream infrastructure that alleviated bottlenecks
• Spent $1 Billion on acquisitions in the play ($750 million on Paloma Partners)
• Reached Total Depth (TD) on 248 gross operated wells during the year
• Brought 215 gross operated wells to production
• Spud to spud drilling time dropped from 35 days to 21 days during the year (40% improvement)
• 370 miles of gathering lines were installed
• 12 central gathering systems brought online, with 7 under construction

Clarence Cazalot Jr, Marathon's CEO, stated "This outstanding performance was largely driven by what we consider to be the highest-value resource plays in the world - the Eagle Ford shale in south Texas, the Bakken shale in North Dakota and the Oklahoma Resource Basins. We've established a 10-year plus drilling inventory across these plays at current rig levels and expect to spend approximately one-third of our $5.2 billion capital, investment and exploration budget for 2013 in the Eagle Ford, the cornerstone of our growth strategy."

We already touched on Mr. Cazalot Jr.'s capital budget comments in a prior article - Marathon Oil's Capital Budget is Eagle Ford Weighted. The company's focus in 2013 will be continued infrastructure build out and downspacing pilots. Pad drilling in 2013 will only lower the average drilling time during the year. It's already dropped below 20 days in January 2013.

Marathon plans to drill 275-320 gross (215-250 net) Eagle Ford wells in 2013. If you haven't seen the well time lapse they published, here you go: