North Louisiana, already one of the hottest oil and gas regions in the South, recently became the scene of a new discovery which developer Chesapeake Energy Corporation of Oklahoma City said is expected to have a "larger impact on the company than any other play in which it has participated to date."

In late March, Chesapeake announced the new natural gas discovery in the Haynesville Shale in Northwest Louisiana. As a result of this discovery, and others which the company is involved in, it has "decided to increase its capital expenditure for 2008 and 2009 in order to increase drilling and leasing activity."

In a news release, Chesapeake said of the Haynesville Shale discovery, "based on its geoscientific, petrophysical, and engineering research during the past two years, and the results of three horizontal and four vertical wells it has drilled, Chesapeake believes the Haynesville Shale play could potentially have a larger impact on the company than any other play in which it has participated to date.

"Chesapeake is currently utilizing four rigs to drill Haynesville Shale wells, and plans to increase its drilling activity level to approximately 10 rigs by year-end 2008, and potentially more in 2009. The company currently owns or has commitments for more than 200,000 net acres of leasehold in the Haynesville Shale, and has a leasehold acquisition effort underway with the goal of owning up to 500,000 acres in the play."

The Haynesville Shale is located in Northwest Louisiana, in Claiborne and Bossier parishes, where oil and gas production was first developed in the 1930s. The Haynesville Shale is at a lower depth than the earlier production, which in recent years has declined significantly.

Along with the announcement of the Haynesville Shale discovery, Chesapeake also listed seven other new discoveries and projects in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Other production in the North Louisiana region includes wells in Jackson, Lincoln, and Bienville parishes, with a growing concentration of drilling, storage, well services, and pipeline construction centered in around Arcadia in Bienville Parish.

New pipeline construction is underway to bring natural gas to the major underground storage operated by Martin Gas in a salt dome adjacent to the town limits of Arcadia.

In a recent lecture at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, Texas energy investor Boone Pickens, of BP Capital, said that natural gas, along with solar and wind energy, can solve the current fuel problem in the U.S. Pickens favors wind and solar energy as a major supplier of electric power, and the use of natural gas fuel as a replacement for transportation, now almost completely dependent on imported petroleum.

In the presentation, presented on C-SPAN during March, Pickens said that by "changing the pie," that is, the ratios of fuels used for transportation and electric power generation, the U.S. can relieve the crisis now facing the country from imported petroleum, and at the same time reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

From recent discoveries such as the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana, plus others already being produced, the country appears poised to make headway in that direction.

Principals in a North Louisiana experimental project aimed at converting wood chips to diesel fuel have said recently that their plans now call for a system to combine natural gas with the wood chip fuel, to produce diesel.

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