What is the depth that folks are drilling (oil) in Hemphill Cty?
For what it is worth, every thing I know about this subject came off of the internet.
The Granite Wash formation runs from the northwest of Roberts County south east into Hemphill and Wheeler Counties and on into Roger Mills County in Oklahoma. It is about 160 miles long and 30 miles wide along the north side of the Amarillo Mountains.
Now you are thinking that there are no mountains there, but they are there, but well under ground. They come above ground in Oklahoma and are known as the Witchita or Ouichita Mountain.
It is a stacked play. There are various levels that produce. It is like unto a stack of pancakes. The depth of these levels varies from place to place, for that reason, you need to make sure any lease you sign has a Pugh clause in it. This is also known in Texas as a Freestone Rider.
You can lease area wise and you can lease depth wise. That means you can lease the depth below another lease.
It seems that the closer to the eroded granite, the deeper the play. It seems as if it runs from about 8,000 foot down to about 19,000 foot. But again, that is just stuff I learned off of the internet.
There is a lot of good information about this play on line. Check out the Linn Energy, Forest Oil, Chesapeake, Apache and Devon websites.
It seems as if this play is being consolidated as the small players are selling out to the bigger operators.
The current hot spots seem to be the Frye and Stiles ranches in Wheeler and Hemphill Counties. From what I can tell, there are some very deep graben or series of graben running along the foot of these sub surface mountains and that is where the sweet spot is.
Just where in the county is your property located? I look forward to exchanging information with anyone interested.
Robert Gill
More interesting reading: http://www.aogr.com/index.php/magazine/cover-story/depositional-pat...
This is mostly about Beckham County, but it sheds a lot of light on what is down there. Towards the end of the article, he cautions that we cannot extrapolate those findings to the whole play. Still, it is very interesting.
Well, I don't know if anyone is really reading this, but it seems as if more attention is now directed to the Hogshooter formation rather than the Granite Wash. I suppose it is a cheaper and easier well to drill with a much better pay back. It is now six months since the Thurman Horn and Meek wells were drilled.
I wonder just how much the production has dropped off in these six months?