Mowry
Shale

The Mowry Shale is a Late Cretaceous marine shale in the deep Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming, both a regional source rock and a horizontal oil target in its own right. It is developed across Converse, Campbell, and Johnson counties, and mineral owners in the basin often see it named on their wells alongside the shallower targets.

Therocks beneath your minerals.

The Mowry is a hard, silica-rich shale deposited in a Cretaceous sea. Its organic content made it an important source rock that charged other reservoirs in the basin, and that same character, combined with its brittleness, makes it responsive to the hydraulic fracturing used in horizontal wells.

In the deep basin the Mowry commonly falls between roughly 11,000 and 13,500 feet. It sits beneath the Turner and the Niobrara within the stacked Cretaceous section, so its depth and maturity vary with position in the basin.

Because these targets are stacked vertically, a single tract can host wells in more than one of them, developed over different phases of basin activity.

Where theproduction lives.

The Mowry has been developed as part of the deep Powder River Basin oil play, generally as one target within a stacked program rather than in isolation. Continental Resources and EOG Resources are among the operators active across the basin’s stacked Cretaceous targets.

Mowry wells produce oil with associated natural gas, with the strongest results in the more thermally mature parts of the deep basin. Development in Wyoming is governed by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which handles spacing and the pooling process that assembles a drilling unit.

The current operator and completed formation on any specific well can be confirmed through the Commission’s public well records.

Mineral rights in theMowry.

Mineral owners in the deep Powder River Basin commonly see Mowry wells on their tracts, often alongside Turner and Niobrara wells in the same area. A single drilling unit can generate staged royalty income as the different stacked layers are developed over time.

For inheritors with Powder River minerals, knowing whether your wells are completed in the Mowry, the Turner, or the Niobrara helps explain what you are receiving and why one tract can carry several producing interests.

Lease terms and pooling elections across Wyoming vary by vintage and by tract, and that language can affect net royalty income beyond what the well data alone would suggest. We are happy to walk through what your specific situation looks like alongside the public well records, on a call or by email.