In the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of Permian Basin oil and gas, New Mexico’s Northwest Shelf has, until now, escaped public notice. It is not the Delaware or Midland basins. Nor is it part of the Spraberry-Bone Spring-Wolfcamp triumvirate of 21st century, headline-producing geology.
But, welcome anyway to the Northwest Shelf’s Yeso, the slope margin dolomitic and time-coterminous equivalent of the Delaware Basin’s Bone Spring to the south. The Yeso occupies that netherworld between conventional and unconventional geologic characteristics that have garnered economic notice with the application of modern horizontal drilling and multistage fracturing.
At less than 5,000 feet, Yeso reservoirs are shallow, which means current breakevens below $30 oil on $4 million horizontal wells. Production finds a ready outlet to the Artesia, N. M., refining complex.
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