An oil discovery ranging from Lubbock to Midland, TX has become the largest “continuous oil” discovery ever found in the United States. The Permian Basin area is now estimated to hold over 20 billion barrels of oil and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas. Companies are starting to use horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to tap into the continuous oil shale reserve.
The Permian Basin region holds as many active oil rigs as the rest of the united states combined, including both offshore and on land. It is the only region where crude oil production is expected to increase for the third consecutive month, according to the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report. The Permian Basin has remained one of the most active fields due to the cost efficiency of extracting fossil fuel from the ground in that area- which is much easier to do than in other regions.
Even in areas where billions of barrels of oil have already been found, there is still potential to produce billions more. The amount of oil in the Wolfcamp shale formation is nearly three times the amount of petroleum products used by the entire nation in one year. It’s safe to say that Midland, TX will quickly become an even larger oil hub.