What is the Permian Basin?

The venerable Permian Basin’s liquid gold has attracted oil and natural gas prospectors for decades. The energy bounty hiding beneath the sparse lands encompassing nearly all of West Texas and a portion of southeastern New Mexico might be nonexistent to casual travelers passing through. But don’t let the dearth of people fool you. Traffic is fairly constant on the two-lane paved roads, as pick-up trucks ferry workers and 18-wheelers carry supplies to the drilling sites that sit behind high metal fence.

Mule deer and javalinas share their land with the oil rigs and the man camps that dot the landscape. A sulfury smell often permeates the air, along with the dust that clings to jeans and boots. “Y’all smell that? It’s the smell of money,” West Texans will tell you.

The Permian’s energy riches cover an area about 250 miles wide and 300 miles long, a whopping 75,000 square miles, with oil and gas produced from depths of a few hundred feet to miles below the surface. The basin contains one of the world’s thickest deposits of Permian-aged rocks from an era 299 million to 251 million years ago, when the basin reached its maximum depth of 29,000 feet.

And that thickness is what separates the Permian from everything else. In terms of the thickness of the hydrocarbon producing zone, the Bakken Shale averages 10-120 feet in thickness, while Eagle Ford Shale formations are 150-300 feet thick. The Permian offers formations that are 1,300-1,800 feet, which is 12 times the Bakken thickness. Within the Permian are three large sub-basins stacked with various reservoirs of limestone, sandstone and shale. The Midland and the Delaware, the two big targets for producers today, are separated by the Central Basin Platform (CBP). Other sections of the Permian include the Northwest Shelf, Marfa Basin, Ozona Arch, Hovey Channel, Val Verde Basin and Eastern Shelf.

Counties

Texas: Andrews, Borden, Brewster, Cochran, Coke, Concho, Cottle, Crane, Crockett, Crosby, Culberson, Dawson, Dickens, Ector, Edwards, Fisher, Floyd, Gaines, Garza, Glasscock, Hale, Hockley, Howard, Hudspeth, Irion, Jeff Davis, Kent, Kimble, King, Knox, Lamb, Loving, Lubbock, Lynn, Martin, McCulloch, Menard, Midland, Mitchell, Motley, Nolan, Pecos, Presidio, Reagan, Reeves, Runnels, Schleicher, Scurry, Sterling, Stonewall, Sutton, Taylor, Terrell, Terry, Tom Green, Upton, Val Verde, Ward, Winkler, Yoakum

New Mexico: Chaves, Eddy, Lea