November Luncheon - Lowell Waite, UTD

The Eastern Shelf of the Midland Basin is one of several high-standing Permo-Pennsylvanian depositional shelves surrounding the deeper Delaware and Midland Basins. Dipping a modest 1.3 degrees eastward, stratigraphic units of the Eastern Shelf consist of a relatively thin succession of pre-Pennsylvanian units (Upper Cambrian sandstones and Lower Ordovician and Mississippian carbonates) unconformably overlain by a thick section of Upper Pennsylvanian to lower Permian cyclothems (alternating lowstand clastics and highstand carbonates). A century of exploration has shown the region contains a multitude of small- to medium-sized conventional oil and gas fields, most of which are housed within Pennsylvanian (Strawn, Canyon) reservoirs. These hydrocarbon reserves occur at a relatively shallow depth (-4000 to -8000 ft. MD). The complex stratigraphy of the region suggests that much oil and gas remains to be found.

Detailed analysis of producing fields from Nolan County, Texas, indicates a wide range of structural and stratigraphic traps within…