Another story as well…
part of what makes the basin area so attractive is: pipelines in place, power grid in place, access roads in place (albeit crowded), drillable every day of the year, no problems with excessive permitting, no problems with unfriendly local government, no problems with rogue groups roaming around with rocket launchers, and the place is so flat with no vegetation it only takes a dozer to make a new drill site, row, access road, tank battery, storage site or man camp. oh, lest the obvious be omitted - lots of caliche around for base.
re the geology - i can not imagine drilling all the available sites in delaware basin in 50 years what with all the stacked formations not to mention if the alpine high pans out . . . people were drilling here 100 yrs ago and, if the world is still using oil and if water can be found, will be drilling here 100 yrs to come. in my humble opinion, as long as there are snakes, hogs and coyotes out there then there will be basin activity 'cause the in-place infrastructure is as much of an attraction as is the geology.
down side - too bad so much gas is being wasted. when i was a kid it was like daylight with all the flares and it still is 50 yrs later; and it would be nice if operators would make an attempt to minimize the light pollution [i understand there is so much activity that the classic dark skies at mcdonald observatory are not so dark anymore].