There are already examples of this scenario unfolding. The Eagle Ford and Bakken, for instance, are both “mature plays,” Hughes argues, in which the best acreage has been picked over. Better technology and an intensification of drilling techniques have arrested decline, and even led to a renewed increase in production. But ultimate recovery won’t be any higher; drilling techniques merely allow “the play to be drained with fewer wells,” Hughes said. And in the case of the Eagle Ford, “there appears to be significant deterioration in longer-term well productivity through overcrowding of wells in sweet spots, resulting in well interference and/or drilling in more marginal areas that are outside of sweet-spots within counties.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Shale-Boom-Is-About-To-Go-Bust.html
