At the beginning of the 21st century, the Permian Basin—which had once been the source of vast oil supplies—seemed to be fading in importance. Thanks to advancements in energy exploration, the Permian Basin was quickly named the largest oil reserve on the planet. Our backyard is expected to fuel the American and global economies for at least the next two decades. With this discovery, our neck of the woods has seen an explosion in economic activity.
Because, as more and more energy is sourced, other industries have appeared alongside it—including business and finance, healthcare, education, construction, digital technology, transportation, and public sector jobs. We get to deliver a modern education at an affordable cost. By a sufficient number of oil tests had been drilled to give sketchy control for a subsurface map of the Permian Basin. Its outline was fairly well defined, and oil discoveries within the basin suggested the probability of interior folds.
In Lon D. Cartwright published a report with a cross section and map, showing a large positive area located in the approximate middle of the basin, which he named the Central Basin Platform.
The map showed the platform trending north-northwest across the Texas-New Mexico line into Lea County. By this time a sufficient number of wells had been drilled to show that the Central Basin Platform was a structural feature common to both states. Because of the great distances to the markets and the lack of pipelines through which to move the oil, deep tests were not economically justified.
Consequently, all oilfields discovered before were producing from Permian dolomite or sand, from depths less than 4, feet. A deep test was started in the Big Lake oil field in Reagan County, and in a large flow of oil and gas was encountered at 8, feet. Fossil evidence showed the producing section to be of Ordovician age. This discovery greatly expanded the prospects for the Permian Basin's becoming a major oil and gas producing area; however, because of the Great Depression in the early s few locations for deep tests were made prior to With the coming of World War II the need for oil was urgent, and it became economically justified to drill more and deeper tests.
During the war many new oil and gas zones were found not only in rocks of Permian and Ordovician age but also from zones in each geologic system from Permian through Cambrian and from practically every known type of subsurface trap. Two of the largest accumulations were the Horseshoe Atoll and the Spraberry trend area. During periods of lower sea levels, eolian and fluvial terrigenous deposits were transported across the shelf areas and accumulated along the shelf margins, to be finally transported into the basin forming thick sandstone and siltstone turbidite deposits.
During the Mesozoic, the region was a stable, non-depositional platform province. Ground-water circulation led to dissolution and some replacement of the Permian evaporates and cavern formation in the limestones.
The outcrop exposures seen today in the Guadalupe and Glass mountains as well as high-angle faulting across the region are a direct result of this Tertiary uplift. In , a trickle of oil 10 barrels per day at the Westbrook Field started a flurry of exploration activity in the region.
Deeper sections were explored and over 1, significant discoveries have been made here. That decline has now been reversed, rising steadily since early , using both new and old technologies. Waterflooding and CO2 injection, horizontal drilling, deeper drilling, and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing are all being used to recover and discover new reserves.
The Permian Basin production is currently estimated at over one million barrels of oil daily after reaching a peak production of 2. Some experts expect the output to reach 1. The Permian Basin covers an area approximately miles wide and miles long and is composed of more than 7, fields best represented in Railroad Commission of Texas production figures as districts 7C, 08, and 8A in West Texas. Various producing formations such as the Yates, San Andres, Clear Fork, Spraberry, Wolfcamp, Yeso, Bone Spring, Avalon, Canyon, Morrow, Devonian, and Ellenberger are all part of the Permian Basin, with oil and natural gas production depths ranging from a few hundred feet to five miles below the surface.
0コメント