Wolfcamp
Shale

The Wolfcamp Shale is the most productive unconventional formation in the United States. It spans the Permian Basin across West Texas and southeast New Mexico, with active drilling extending from the Midland sub-basin through the Central Basin Platform and into the Delaware sub-basin. By volume, the Wolfcamp produces more oil than any other single formation in the country and is the primary reason the Permian has remained the dominant US oil basin for the past decade.

Therocks beneath your minerals.

The Wolfcamp is a Permian-aged organic-rich shale, deposited roughly 290 million years ago in a deep marine basin. It is divided informally into four benches, labeled A through D from top to bottom. Each bench has different rock properties, gas-to-oil ratios, and economic profiles.

The Wolfcamp A and Wolfcamp B are the most heavily targeted benches in the Midland Basin, with Wolfcamp B in particular driving the early Spraberry-Wolfcamp horizontal boom. In the Delaware Basin, all four benches see development, with the Wolfcamp A and Wolfcamp X-Y interval (a productive layer at the top of the Wolfcamp section) carrying the most activity.

Total Wolfcamp section thickness can exceed 1,500 feet in the deeper parts of the Delaware Basin and 800 to 1,000 feet across most of the Midland Basin. This thickness, combined with the stacked productive benches, is what makes the Permian a “stacked-pay” basin: a single section of acreage can support multiple horizontal wells targeting different intervals over the life of development.

Where theproduction lives.

Wolfcamp drilling is sustained at high levels across the basin, with hundreds of new horizontal wells completed each quarter. The largest operators include ExxonMobil, Occidental, Chevron, Diamondback, ConocoPhillips, Pioneer (now part of ExxonMobil), Devon, and EOG, among many others. Smaller and mid-size independents fill in around the majors throughout the basin.

Modern Wolfcamp wells are typically two miles long, with completion designs that have steadily intensified since the play’s early years. Modern Wolfcamp wells deliver strong initial production rates and substantial year-one cumulative production, with the strongest results concentrated in the basin’s core sub-basin areas.

Mineral rights in theWolfcamp.

The Wolfcamp drives most royalty checks in the Permian Basin. Mineral owners across the Midland sub-basin counties (Midland, Martin, Howard, Glasscock, Reagan, Upton) and the Delaware sub-basin counties (Reeves, Loving, Ward, Pecos in Texas; Eddy, Lea in New Mexico) overwhelmingly receive their income from Wolfcamp horizontal wells. The A and B benches are the most likely current producers.

For inheritors with Permian interests, the Wolfcamp is typically the primary asset. The Bone Spring (Delaware sub-basin), Spraberry (Midland sub-basin), and Avalon (Delaware sub-basin) often provide additional development potential on the same drilling units. Stacked Permian development can produce multiple wells per spacing unit over the life of development, with operators returning to the same acreage to drill different benches over a multi-year cycle.

The Permian’s broad operator base and consolidation pace mean royalty paperwork frequently shows multiple operator names over time. Pioneer Natural Resources, Anadarko, Concho Resources, and other names appear on legacy paperwork from acquisitions over the past several years. The underlying mineral interest carries over unchanged through these transactions; what changes is the company administering the payment.