Petroleum and Natural Gas

Since 1933 detailed data has been developed on oil and gas exploration in Oklahoma, but the data prior to that time, especially for the boom years, are incomplete. It has been estimated that the total number of wells drilled in the state in search of oil and gas is probably greater than half a million. In 1981 there were 82,639 wells producing crude oil and 16,994 wells producing natural gas. Daily average production of oil was six barrels per well, and the value of crude oil and natural gas produced in 1981 was $9.2 billion. Total cumulative production during 1901 through 1981 was 12.2 billion barrels of oil, 49.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.46 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. The total value of these products was $68.5 billion.

Due in considerable part to the oil embargo by the Organization of petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1973, the price of oil increased tremendously. In 1973, Oklahoma produced 191.2 million barrels of oil worth $723 million or approximately $3.78 a barrel. In 1981, 152.2 million barrels of oil were produced in the state worth $5.35 billion or $35.18 a barrel. The great increase in the price of oil during the seventies led to a burgeoning oil and gas drilling industry that produced an all-time high value of $9.2 billion in 1981. In that year Oklahoma ranked fifth in oil-production among the nation’s oil producing states by providing 5 percent of the total national output, and third among the states in production of natural gas with 10 percent of the nation’s output.

In 1979 a well in Beckham County was producing gas from a depth of 23,920 to 24,924 feet. This well established a new depth record for production in Oklahoma and flowed 9 million cubic feet of gas per day. Beckham and Washita counties are in the deep part of the Anadarko basin and continue to be the area of deepest drilling in Oklahoma. The deepest borehole in the United States is located in Beckham County. In 1974 the Lone Star No. 1 Bertha Rodgers was drilled to a total depth of 31,441 feet and captured the depth record from a well in Washita County, the Lone Star No. 1 Baden, which had been drilled to a depth of 30,050 feet in 1972. These wells were drilled as part of the intensive exploration program designed to find natural gas reserves known to exist at great depths in major sedimentary basins of the world.

This material was taken from or based upon two Oklahoma Geological Survey publications, Geology and Earth Resources of Oklahoma (revised, 1979) and Oklahoma Geology Notes 43 no. 6 (December, 1983).