Federal agency: More recoverable oil in West Texas than previously thought
The U.S. Geological Survey has made its largest discovery of recoverable crude ever under parts of West Texas, the federal agency announced Tuesday.
A recent assessment found the "Wolfcamp shale" geologic formation in the Midland area holds an estimated 20 billion barrels of accessible oil along with 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. That's three times higher than the amount of recoverable crude the agency found in the Bakken-Three Forks region in the upper midwest in 2013, making it "the largest estimated continuous oil accumulation that USGS has assessed in the United States to date," according to a statement.
“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.
Guidroz attributed that potential to "changes in technology" — i.e., the advent and perfection of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. Such advances "can have significant effects on what resources are technically recoverable," he said.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/11/15/west-texas-oil-theres-lot-more-where-came/
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