Permian Newsletter, February 2000
The Permian Basin occupies approximately 70-80
thousand square miles and includes 51 counties in west Texas and four counties in
southeastern New Mexico. The basin is
bounded structurally on the east by the Bend arch, on the north by the Amarillo-Ouachita
uplift, on the west by the Sacramento Mountains and on the south by the Marathon thrust
belt. Sedimentary rocks within the basin are
as much as 30,000 feet thick in the deepest areas. Nearly
all the rocks are of Paleozoic era within a thin veneer of Mesozoic strata at the surface. Carbonates, both limestone and dolomite, are the
dominant lithology. The basin currently
produces just over 5 Bcf/d, with 25% of the volume from the New Mexico side and 75% from
the Texas side. Almost 50,000 wells, of which
34,000 are oil wells, are contained in this basin. The
current estimated remaining recoverable reserves for southeastern New Mexico is 2.6 Tcf of
gas and 719 million barrels of oil. Total gas
production from southeastern New Mexico has increased steadily over the last ten years,
from 1.1 Bcf/d in 1988 to over 1.4 Bcf/d during 1997.
Oil production from this area during the same period has remained relatively flat,
at just over 60 million barrels per year. |
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