And we’re not talking about President-elect Trump. We’re talking about the discovery of the largest continuous oil and gas deposit EVER in the United States. Earlier this week, the USGS reported a find of 20 billion barrels of oil and nearly 17 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Wolfcamp Shale in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin. To put that amount in perspective, that’s enough oil and natural gas to be the sole supplier to the entire US for more than 3 years. To give an even better picture, the largest producing oil field ever discovered in North America, the Prudhoe Bay formation in Alaska, has produced just over 12 billion barrels of oil over the past 43 years!
This is a big deal. The USGS says that all 20 billion barrels of oil are technically recoverable meaning that it can all be produced using current technology and methods. That’s important to note.“The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” said Walter Guidroz, program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program. “Changes in technology and industry practices can have significant effects on what resources are technically recoverable, and that’s why we continue to perform resource assessments throughout the United States and the world.”
With Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry leading the way in exploration technologies, we may see more finds like this in areas that we once thought were tapped out. Not only here in Oklahoma, but across the US.
Uncovering new reserves will not only have tremendous economic impact in the immediate area of the find, but will transcend to states where producers, service companies and midstream companies operate. It will also have an effect on domestic supply of oil and natural gas for decades to come.
See the full USGS story at: https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-estimates-20-billion-barrels-oil-texas-wolfcamp-shale-formation