New USGS assessment indicates Wolfcamp shale holds an estimated 20 billion barrels of oil

The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin province contains an estimated mean of 20 billion bbls of oil, 16 trillion cu ft of associated natural gas, and 1.6 billion bbls of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the US Geological Survey. This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.

The estimate of continuous oil in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp shale assessment is nearly three times larger than that of the 2013 USGS Bakken-Three Forks resource assessment, making this the largest estimated continuous oil accumulation that USGS has assessed in the United States to date.

“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.”

Although the USGS has assessed oil and gas resources in the Permian Basin province, this is the first assessment of continuous resources in the Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of the Permian.

Since the 1980s, the Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin has been part of the “Wolfberry” play that encompasses Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and Lower Permian reservoirs. Oil has been produced using traditional vertical well technology.

However, more recently, oil and gas companies have been using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and more than 3,000 horizontal wells have been drilled and completed in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp section.

The Wolfcamp shale is also present in the Delaware Basin portion of the Permian Basin province, but was not included in this assessment. The Permian Basin province includes a series of basins and other geologic formations in West Texas and southern New Mexico. It is one of the most productive areas for oil and gas in the entire United States.

The USGS Wolfcamp shale assessment was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol.

Click here to read the full USGS assessment of the Wolfcamp shale.