US still has new unconventional plays to be discovered: EOG chief

Tens of thousands of shale and unconventional oil and natural gas wells are producing in US fields, but there likely are still opportunities for ambitious upstream players to tap new resources in multiple regions, the top executive of EOG Resources said May 28.

Companies need to be diligent, patient, technology-savvy and collect and analyze hordes of data – even old data from plays that other companies have considered to be uneconomic – and create models that can prove that innovation plus efficiencies can make a mature play profitable where others have failed to do so, CEO Ezra Yacob said in webcast remarks at the 41st Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York.

EOG in recent years has unveiled two new domestic plays – the Utica combo oil in eastern Ohio and the Dorado gas field in South Texas, both of which it hopes to develop into core operating areas. The company discovered those petroleum troves from being a "first-mover" years ago and toiled for long periods, quietly testing acreage and the play's various zones, Yacob said.

"Technology helped us identify new landing zones, and make economic wells out of ... bypassed zones," he said.

EOG looked at the Utica, its latest success story, for about a decade in three concerted efforts to unlock its secrets. It ultimately applied technology and techniques for reservoir characterization that it developed in another play, the Woodford interval, he added.

The company coupled that with some completions technology, and only then did it "really start to see the significant uplift we needed'" in desired productivity and return rates, Yacob said.

Not many operators are US shale explorers

"Those are the types of things that are going to drive forward North Amerian exploration" in the years ahead, he said. "There aren't a lot of companies doing that."

"I'd say most companies focus on exploitation and unlocking maybe Tier 2 acreage and making it more economic – which is a great avenue and everyone should be doing that," he said. "But there's not a lot of operators exploring for absolutely new resources."

The Uinta basin in Utah is another example of a play that has recently experienced a "rebirth" in oil exploration after about a decade of being virtually dormant. The basin yields a thick, waxy crude which more than a decade ago attracted the attention of several large operators when oil prices had reached upwards of $100/b.

But when oil prices collapsed about a decade ago, in part due to several years of rapidly expanding shale exploitation that outpaced demand in the early 2010s, the Uinta and other relatively small, marginal oil-prone basins such as the Mississippi Lime in Oklahoma and some other Oklahoma and east Texas plays were ultimately shelved. Since then, they haven't received much attention from industry players.

Efficiencies bring down costs of new plays

Now, however, oil prices have fallen to around $60/b from as much as $80/b earlier in 2025, but producers have made great strides in bringing down their cost of supply. For example, in its Dorado play EOG has increased by 15% both drilled feet per day and completed lateral feet per day from 2024 levels.

On the drilling side, the efficiencies were achieved through Increased bottom hole assembly performance from EOG's motor program, and on the completions side the efficiencies came from "super-zipper" well completions and continuous pumping operations, according to the company's May 2025 presentation. Other operators have achieved similar magnitudes of savings on their well drilling and completions efficiencies.

"I think there are a lot of opportunities for unconventional horizontal exploration," Yacob said. "I wouldn't say there's another Permian [Basin] lurking somewhere out there, but I think you could find another Uinta, another Utica or Dorado, where you can still unlock some ... scale of resources."

Besides the Utica and Dorado plays, EOG also has major operations in the Permian, Eagle Ford Shale, Bakken Shale, Powder River Basin, and DJ Basin, as well as the Columbus Basin offshore Trindad and Tobago.

In Q1 2025, EOG produced 1.09 million b/d of equivalent oil, 46% of it crude and condensate, up 6% from the same period in 2024.