The Wolfcamp shale is in the Midland Basin portion of the Permian Basin and contains an estimated 20 billion barrels of oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to the USGS assessment.
The USGS estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. This means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences, such as those in conventional accumulations. Unconventional resources often require special technical drilling and recovery methods.
“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.
Bloomberg says that the USGS estimate lends credence to Pioneer Natural Resources Co. Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield’s comment that the Permian Shale could hold as much as 75 billion barrels of oil, making it second to Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field.
Pioneer has wasted no time in increasing their drilling in the Wolfcamp field, producing bigger and bigger gushers. And oil producers and wannabes have been flocking to the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico to tap into the profits that are so rich right now, despite the two-and-a-half year oil slump.
The oil is located in four layers of shale, and sits under land owned by several energy companies. The deposits can only be recovered using modern methods including fracking and horizontal drilling. The huge supply of oil and natural gas leads some people to wonder just how much farther we are willing to go with fracking.
Oklahoma is already having earthquakes that have caused considerable damage, all due to fracking, and Texas also has been plagued with earthquakes. And then there is the question of just how much oil do we need?
