America’s energy security just got a lot more secure. On November 28, 2018, The United States Geological Survey (USGS) published an assessment of continuous (unconventional or ‘tight’) resources in a part of the prolific Permian oil and gas basin that straddles Western Texas and Southeastern New Mexico. Located in the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation, the unproven, technically recoverable reserves are officially the largest on the planet. But curiously this story isn’t making waves in the mainstream media.
Nearly one third of the United States’ crude already comes from the Permian, making it the largest shale-oil producing region in the country. While numerous studies have been conducted on the Permian’s half-dozen sub-basins and their many overlapping formations, this represents the first comprehensives USGS assessment of continuous resources in Wolfcamp and Bone Spring within the Delaware Basin.
We also found this oil reserve recently:
Third biggest ever found.
Before I left Midland, my employer was looking at these formations that lie mostly East and South of Midland.
IIRC, the Wolfcamp will be a very prolific shale-oil play while the Bone Spring is an exciting (and wet*) NatGas play.
It was being compared to the Delaware Basin production in the western edge of the PB.
*Wet = high propane and butane values.
The USGS Energy Resources Program has studied oil shale resources of the United States, with a significant effort on the Eocene Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
This formation contains the largest oil shale deposits in the world.