Eagle Ford area still in catch-up mode

Though the play is in a slowdown, infrastructure needs are still there

SAN ANTONIO — It’s been nearly seven years since the first well was drilled in the Eagle Ford Shale, and now the massive oil field is in the middle of its first major slowdown. Yet South Texas in so many ways still has not caught its breath.

The region continues to grapple with the basics: roads, water, emergency response to an increase in traffic accidents.

Nancy Beward, program manager with the state’s Disaster Recovery Program Management Team, compared the infrastructure needs to the rebuilding required after a major hurricane hits.

Though the field boomed and workers flooded into South Texas, the region needs improvements to its water systems, its heavily damaged roads, health facilities and public safety systems. But the oil field is a long-term need, not a passing storm.

“What’s going on in the Eagle Ford region is not fast,” said Beward, who spoke Thursday at the Eagle Ford Consortium’s conference in San Antonio. If the infrastructure in South Texas isn’t addressed now, Breward asked, then when?

“We’re going to wait for the next one?” Beward asked.

Kevin Moriarty, CEO and president of Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, said the Eagle Ford activity exposed a radical divide between the urban world of San Antonio and the rural world to the south.

If he were to fall and break his leg in San Antonio, he could expect emergency services to arrive in five to seven minutes. After being stabilized, he’d arrive at a hospital in another five to seven minutes.

In South Texas, though, emergency response in remote areas can take an hour or two.

“The mortality rates in these areas are absolutely skyrocketing because of these issues,” Moriarty said.

Gonzales’ hospital saw a 50 percent increase in patients in a couple of years. In just two years, Mullen County saw a 412 percent increase in accidents.

“That’s a county with no hospital and no EMS,” Moriarty said. “We need more access to health care in these communities.”

Moriarty said the largest private employers in the region will have to step up to provide better health care access. Even simple things — clearing an area of brush to create a helicopter landing pad near a large number of wells — would be helpful in case of emergencies, he said.

“But somebody has to pay for it,” he said. “I don’t think the state of Texas is going to.”

While dealing with long-term infrastructure issues, Eagle Ford communities also are still feeling their way through an oil price crash that started around Thanksgiving.

So far, the Eagle Ford is on track for half as many drilling permits as last year, around 2,800 compared with 5,600 drilling permits in 2014, said Thomas Tunstall, research director with the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The Eagle Ford in 2013 had an estimated $87 billion impact across 21 South Texas counties, according to a UTSA study.

UTSA has lowered its expectations for what’s anticipated by 2023 — an impact of $72 billion to $100 billion, down from $137 billion.