U.S Largest Shale Oil Deposit Discovered

Oil explorers in the U.S. state of Texas said they've discovered the largest deposit of shale oil in a region known as the Permian Basin.

The so-called Wolfcamp formation, explorers believe, could hold up to 20 billion barrels of oil, worth up to $900 billion. The find could be three times bigger than the state of North Dakota’s Bakken rock formation, the largest find of unconventional oil ever discovered.

Based on a West Texas Intermediate crude oil price of $45 per barrel, those deposits are worth about $900 billion.

The estimate lends credence to the assertion from Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield that the Permian’s shale could hold as much as 75 billion barrels, making it second only to Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field. Irving-based Pioneer has been increasing its production targets all year as drilling in the Wolfcamp produced bigger gushers than the company’s engineers and geologists forecast.

“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,” Walter Guidroz, coordinator for the geological survey’s energy resources program, said in the statement.

“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,” Guidroz continues.

The land is currently controlled by five energy companies: Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, Apache, Pioneer Natural Resources and Concho Resources. According to The Motley Fool, a financial services company, Chevron owns the largest portion of land.

The Wolfcamp deposit is located at the Midland Basin, which is itself a part of the Permian. Since 1980, Wolfcamp’s shale reserves have related to the Wolfberry field, but oil was produced using conventional vertical wells at the time. Nevertheless, oil and gas companies have been using horizontal drilling and hydraulic rapture in recent years. Over 3,000 horizontal wells have already been drilled at Wolfcamp.

New finds are attracting more investors to the Permian Basin amid improving oil prices.