RE:Oil FlowThe Permian has had (and to some
extent still has) a substantial amount of conventional oil production. Fracing has simply allowed different formations, which they always knew contained hydrocarbons, to be economically produced when the lack of permeability (in the shales i.e. the wolfcamp formation) prevented production under primary production (no fracing or EOR) techniques.
The logs and cores will determine if fracing will be necessary. I will say, that conventional
fields can frac to increase production (like the Viking formation in Saskatchewan around kindersley), but that will likely be determined during the appraisal portion of field development. There are also different formation stimulation techniques that increase production and don't carry the same negative connotation as fracing, like acidizing carbonate formations (which one of the news releases indicated they found). Time will tell.