Carrizo Oil & Gas has announced that its four New Dawn horizontal Barnett Shale wells located in SE Tarrant have finished fracture stimulation and commenced sales at a combined 17 million cubic feet per day gross.

These wells, in addition to three new horizontal Tier 1 wells in Parker County of Texas, US, helped bring Carrizo’s year-end production rate in the Barnett Shale to 47 million cubic equivalent feet per day (mcfe/d), 135% higher than the year-end 2006 rate of 20mcfe/d.

Pipeline work is now complete for the five Taylor wells in the same SE Tarrant area. Fracture stimulation of 36 stages will start on January 7, 2008, and is expected to take about 30 days to complete and begin sales.

Carrizo has four operated rigs drilling horizontal wells in the Barnett Shale. One of these rigs is dedicated to drilling on The University of Texas – Arlington campus where drilling of the first well is complete, and a second well was also spud. Once the five wells have been drilled, all five will be fracture stimulated and begin sales before additional drilling begins.