Eagle Ford Shale Play

Eagle Ford Shale In nighttime satellite imagery, the light from the Eagle Ford shale play competes with the nearby cities of San Antonio and Austin. The electric glow of drilling equipment, worker camps, and other gas and oil infrastructure combine with flickering gas flares to create an unmistakable arc of light across southern Texas. (Play is a term used by petroleum geologists to describe a geological formation that has been targeted for exploration because it likely contains oil or gas.) On July 15, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime view of Eagle Ford. The image was acquired by the VIIRS day-night band, which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as city lights, auroras, wildfires, and reflected moonlight. The Eagle Ford Shale, which is about 600 kilometers (400 miles) long and 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide, is a source of both oil and gas. Most of the oil-producing wells are located on the northern part of the play; the gas-producing wells are located along its southern edge. Read more at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87725

A photo posted by NASA Earth Observatory (@nasa_eo) on Mar 25, 2016 at 1:46pm PDT