We have continued building these new venture positions and now have roughly 850,000 net acres and a handful of new plays, primarily targeting oil and liquid rich gas.
While we are still actively leasing in several of these plays, we're not ready to discuss them all, we have largely secured our position in one new area that I will tell you about today. The Tuscaloosa Shale is located along Louisiana and Mississippi border. This is a Cretaceous age formation that is stratigraphically equivalent to the Eagle Ford Shale. It is approximately 200 to 400 feet thick, at depths of 11,000 to 14,000 feet across our acreage position. Oil production has been established, up dip in the play from the Tuscaloosa Shale. We plan to utilize horizontal drilling and fracture simulation to enhance the productivity of the reservoir in both the oil and liquids-rich portion of the play. We have leased or have committed under contract approximately 250,000 prospective net acres at an average cost of $180 per acre. We plan to drill our first 2 horizontal wells in the play this year.
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David Hager:
Well, yes, let me just give you a few of the things that we like about the Tuscaloosa Shale. And having said that, this is a frontier place, so I do want to mischaracterize it as something else because -- and frankly, we have been leading the industry by taking our position here. So it is a frontier play. But let me tell you some of the things that we do like about the play that give us reason for encouragement. It is the stratigraphic equivalent to the Eagle Ford Shale. It is deeper than Eagle Ford Shale about 11,000 to 14,000 foot depth, but it is a stratigraphic equivalent to it. There has been oil production established up dip in the Tuscaloosa Shale also. There have been some vertical wells that have been drilled in there that indicates that you're getting for a shale-type play, that has good porosity and permeability. We're also seeing some carbonates in there, which indicate that maybe somewhat brittle and able to be fractured. We've seen IPs on the vertical wells up to 300 barrels per day. They were just about -- just a very small number of horizontal wells have been drilled a couple or 3 years ago, and they were of limited horizontal link on the order of 1,500 to 2,000 foot with only 3 stages. But they tested up to 500 barrels per day from these very limited and minimally frac-ed wells. So all of those give us reasons for encouragement. Now having said that, it's very early on, and we're going to start drilling some horizontal wells, we need to get more data on rock frac-ability. And there are some sands below that are wet, we need to stay away from those. We need to get more information on the phase, oil and natural gas because just aren't that many wells. We know exactly who are on the play, the boundaries between those are. So there are some risks associated with it. I don't want to mislead you. But there are some encouraging qualities to establish a 250,000-acre position for less than $50 million, that's kind of thing we're successful. We can create an awful lot of value.
Scott Hanold - RBC Capital Markets, LLC
Okay. Great, great. And you said, you're going to drill 2 horizontal wells there this year, is that correct?
David Hager
Yes, we're going to have a rig out there here in the second quarter.
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David Tameron - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
Back to Tuscaloosa, how many vertical wells have been drilled in the area? How much data do you have that you're looking at?
David Hager
It's just a handful of vertical wells. I don't have an exact number of it. And about 3 or so horizontal wells were drilled about 3 years ago I think, 3 or 4.
David Tameron - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
Okay. And again, you said you're going to start drilling second quarter and then update us late this year, first part next year type of thing?
David Hager
Yes. Just so you know, I mean, the Tuscaloosa Shale, I worked at this play as a geophysicist 25 years ago by the way, not for the shale but there are some sands just beneath there that everybody was drilling for 25 years ago. There's a lot of wells have gone through the Tuscaloosa Shale, but the wells I'm talking about are ones that are actually completed in the Tuscaloosa Shale.
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John Herrlin - Societe Generale Cross Asset Research
Some quick ones for you, Dave. With the Tuscaloosa, have any idea what the completed well costs will run?
David Hager
Well, it's pretty early on here. And obviously, the first well are going to be more science well, as I said, where we're going to do a lot more we're not going to have the efficiencies that we think we'll have in later wells. We think probably, eventually that somewhere around $12 million range is somewhere where we will be looking at drilling and complete.
John Herrlin - Societe Generale Cross Asset Research
Okay. With that formation, do you have sense of what the TOCs are?
David Hager
TOCs run around 3% or 4%
