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Anadarko Basin: A Super Basin
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This wide-ranging basin covers more than 50,000 square miles, extending from west-central Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Panhandle into parts of southwest Kansas, southeast Colorado and the Texas Panhandle.
The Anadarko Basin has also been an important source of conventional oil and gas production. In recent years, advances in drilling and completion technology have allowed operators to tap into previously inaccessible reserves, leading to a resurgence in production.
The Anadarko Basin has been a major focus of the oil and gas industry for many years, and more recently it has become best known for its highly productive unconventional resource plays. These include the SCOOP (South Central Oklahoma Oil Province), STACK (Sooner Trend Anadarko Basin Canadian and Kingfisher Counties) and Cana-Woodford plays, along with a multi-zone play involving Cleveland sands along both sides of the Oklahoma-Texas Panhandle border.
The Anadarko Basin of western Oklahoma is also one of the world's deepest oil basins. At more than 7 miles deep, it contains multiple reservoirs and source rocks with cumulative production of at least 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent, and future production potential of more than 5 billion boe.
Anadarko Basin Fun Facts and Statistics
- In 2017, the EIA recognized this basin as one of the top shale plays in the U.S.
- In 2010, the USGS estimated that the basin area held 495 million barrels of oil.
- The basin area covers approximately 50,000 square miles.
- In 2010, the USGS estimated that the region held 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
- In 2010, the USGS estimated that the region held 410 million barrels of natural gas liquids.
- In 1972, the Baden No. 1 well near Elk City, Oklahoma set a new world-record depth of a well at 30,500 feet. (That record has since been broken.)
- On April 13, 1974, Bertha Rogers No. 1 in Washita County reached a total depth of 31,441 feet. (A world record until 2004.)*
- The Parker Drilling Rig 114 in Elk City, Oklahoma was originally designed for drilling wells to test atomic bombs. The Parker Rig stands at 180 feet.
Anadarko Basin Map
Anadarko Basin Overview – Maps – Geology – Counties
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Beckham County
The development of the deep portion of the region in southwestern Oklahoma triggered a new oil-boom era when Robert A. Hefner III, “the Father of Deep Natural Gas” began an extensive drilling program in the area around Elk City. In 1969 the GHK’s Number One Green well, drilled to a depth of 24,454 feet in Beckham County, blew in at the highest pressure ever recorded.
A drilling boom in western Oklahoma resulted as oilmen rushed to the state as hundreds of millions of dollars poured from the earth. As you can imagine, this made several owners of Oklahoma mineral rights extremely happy.
Robert Hefner, “Father of Deep Natural Gas” in the Anadarko Basin.
Northern and Western flanks
Significant oil and gas discoveries have been made throughout this region, including the Hugoton-Panhandle Gas Field of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in the 1920s and numerous others in Oklahoma, such as the West Edmond Field, the Union City Field, and the Elk City Field, after 1950.
Practically all of these discoveries developed at depths of less than ten thousand feet. where companies like Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, founded by Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward, and SandRidge Energy, also founded by Tom Ward, drilled thousands of gas wells.
Oklahoma’s history has long been tied to both oil prices and natural gas prices. Western Oklahoma mineral owners in this prized basin, over the years, have been able to lease their minerals many times over and over and are thankful for companies like Chesapeake and SandRidge.
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