Gas production from the US Haynesville Shale continues to favour the state of Louisiana over East Texas, with the former set to become a major gas producing state while pipeline development in East Texas continues to slow, a new report by business intelligence expert GlobalData has found.

The new report found that several major gas companies are funding extensive infrastructure developments in Louisiana to allow the transport of produce from the shale to end-user markets. This will dramatically increase revenue from the shale, and will dictate the growing competition for mining permits in the area. However, investment in the same shale in East Texas will take the opposite direction as production slows.

The Haynesville shale has emerged as one of the most promising natural gas producing shales in the US. The total production from Haynesville/Bossier shale increased from 427.23 billion cubic feet equivalent (bcfe) in 2008 to 1,877.15bcfe in 2010, and is estimated to exceed 6,000bcfe by 2015 and 14,000bcfe by 2020.

Production from the Haynesville shale in Louisiana increased significantly from 18.32bcfe in 2008 to 1,198.6.8bcfe in 2010. However, while production from Louisiana has witnessed a rapid increase, production from East Texas has slowed, increasing from 408.91bcfe in 2008 to just 678.59bcfe in 2010.

Drilling activities in the Haynesville shale of Louisiana increased from 1,156 in February 2011 to 1,802 in January 2012, showing a 55% increase in the number of producing wells during the course of less than one year.

Chesapeake Energy alone had successfully drilled a total of 708 wells by last October, followed by EXCO with 301 wells, Petrohawk with 262 wells, EnCana with 253 wells, and SWEPI LP with 143 wells.

These companies have also been undertaking activities to increase their production by improving infrastructure and developmental facilities at the Haynesville shale. These companies collaborated with large pipeline companies during 2011, in order to improve transport for the extracted crude gas from producing wells to end-user markets.

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. and Acadian Gas LLC jointly developed the Acadian Haynesville extension pipeline in November 2011, and similarly, Energy Transfer Partners LP completed its (ETC) Tiger Pipeline project in December 2010.

This pipeline is connected to seven interstate pipelines, and takes the production from Haynesville/Bossier shale to Midwest and Northeast customers.