Permian Basin Data, History & Stats
This guide provides information about the Permian Basin, oil and gas data, history, top operators and other facts.
Did you know that more than half of all Permian-aged production comes from the US Permian Basin?
It is one of the nation’s oldest oil and gas producing regions, and here’s everything you need to know about its location, production, and other key facts.
Permian Basin: The largest oil-producing region in the US
Today, about 45% of all oil produced in the US is from the Permian basin. The basin is staggering in size, extending across 55 counties in west Texas and southeast New Mexico. It’s made up of over 7,000 fields and spans more than 86,000 square miles.
What is the Permian Basin?
Beyond its sheer size, the concept of ‘stacked pay’ drives industry-leading levels of activity. There are multiple producing zones that can be economically produced from a single location and this concept allows operators to drill multiple wells, targeting multiple zones, from one operational footprint. This reduces operational and finding costs substantially, making the basin one of the most attractive and de-risked regions in the United States. This is especially true when considering the industry friendly state legislatures and existing/planned infrastructure.
By the mid-2000s, producers had adopted horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques. This horizontal production entrenched the Permian as the leading basin in the US by both activity and productivity. Below you will see just how dominant the activity levels in the basin are. Keep in mind, the drilling of a horizontal well represents the most confident, leading-edge indicator that the industry uses to forecast future production.
Horizontal Rig Count
Permian Major Sub-Basins
The Permian Basin is made up of three major areas: the Midland Basin in the east, the Delaware Basin in the west, and the Central Basin Platform between them.
The Delaware Basin extends over 10,000 square miles and covers a 6.4M acre area, including significant development in the Bone Spring and Wolfcamp, together known as the Wolfbone. It is the deepest of the Permian with the thickest deposits of rock. Primary targets in the basin are the organic-rich units within the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring groups, with the latter having more localized, turbidity-driven deposition.
The Delaware Basin was once overlooked as a “graveyard”, situated in an arid and sparsely inhabited region of the nation. There was not a single producing well within 100 miles of the Delaware Basin in the early 1920s. But when fracking and horizontal drilling technology improved, it became more cost-effective to target unconventional shale deposits in the Delaware Basin. The average cost of a well in Delaware is $6–$8 million, though this has been creeping up recently.
The Midland Basin covers 13,000 square miles of West Texas. It spans 20 counties, from Terry and Lynn in the north to Crockett and Schleicher in the south. The majority of the Midland Basin’s tight oil development has taken place at depths between 7,000 and 10,000 feet, especially in the counties of Martin, Midland, Upton, Howard, Glasscock, and Reagan.
The Midland Basin in Texas is made up of numerous stacked hydrocarbon-bearing formations and is a part of the wider Permian Basin, which extends through portions of western Texas and eastern New Mexico. The Midland Basin in particular saw increased production in 2019, which helped the United States produce more crude oil and natural gas than ever before.
The Central Basin Platform is located in west Texas and a portion of southeastern New Mexico. It’s between the Delaware and Midland Basins, situated in the center of the Permian. It has in many respects served as the foundation of the Permian Basin’s output for a century. The Central Basin Platform has provided about 45% of all the barrels produced so far in the Permian.
The San Andres formation on the Central Basin Platform is a mostly oil-bearing deposit that has been drilled and produced for more than 90 years. It is a high oil-saturated “conventional shallow non-contiguous carbonate reservoir” at a depth of about 5,000′. About 40%, or 12 billion barrels, of the over 30 billion barrels produced in the Permian Basin originated from the San Andres reservoir. Although the San Andres has historically been produced vertically, horizontal drilling has yielded improved production rates.
The Permian Basin: History, Data and Facts
Despite being named after the Permian Period (299–251 million years ago), the Permian Basin can be traced back much earlier to Precambrian tectonic events that took place between roughly 1.3 billion and 850 million years ago.
However, subsidence and deposition reached incredibly high levels during the Permian, making it one of the thickest deposits of Permian-era rocks on the entire planet. Because of this, it is named the Permian Basin.
Permian Oil Production
When and how did it start?
The first well was drilled by W.H. Abrams in 1920, but it could not be economically viable because it barely produced 10 barrels of oil per day. The well was named Santa Rita in honor of the Patron Saint of the Impossible when Texon Energy tried again in August 1921 after several months of failure. Oil first emerged from the Santa Rita well in May 1923, almost two years after drilling began. The well produced for nearly 70 years till it was plugged off in 1990.
Early in the 1970s, gas output skyrocketed to approximately 10 billion cubic feet per day, while oil production reached a peak of almost 2 million barrels per day. The Permian Basin supplied almost 20% of the oil and 15% of the natural gas used in the United States during this period.
Oil production had decreased more than 60% from its peak in the early 1970s by the mid-2000s. With the advent of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods, the number of rigs used for horizontal drilling has increased from 275 in January 2022 to 329 in August 2022. The Permian Basin’s production has increased as a result.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated in its productivity report of June that oil output in the Permian is due to increase by 84,000 barrels per day (bpd) to a record 5.316 million bpd in July 2022.
Unconventional Oil Production Over The Last 5 Years
Top 20 Counties [2020-2025]
Ranking | County | State | Horizontal Well Count | November 2025 – Daily Production (Bo/d) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Eddy (NM) | New Mexico | 3,874 | 935,964 |
2 | Lea | New Mexico | 4,525 | 934,475 |
3 | Martin (TX) | Texas | 3,460 | 668,580 |
4 | Midland (TX) | Texas | 3,089 | 534,689 |
5 | Loving | Texas | 1,794 | 377,582 |
6 | Reeves | Texas | 2,138 | 347,048 |
7 | Upton | Texas | 1,471 | 248,907 |
8 | Howard (TX) | Texas | 2,061 | 193,286 |
9 | Reagan | Texas | 1,103 | 154,287 |
10 | Andrews | Texas | 1,196 | 135,670 |
11 | Ward (TX) | Texas | 826 | 133,733 |
12 | Glasscock | Texas | 823 | 122,567 |
13 | Culberson | Texas | 625 | 95,788 |
14 | Winkler | Texas | 409 | 39,446 |
15 | Crane | Texas | 772 | 38,624 |
16 | Borden | Texas | 190 | 27,460 |
17 | Ector | Texas | 740 | 26,816 |
18 | Yoakum | Texas | 398 | 21,733 |
19 | Irion | Texas | 252 | 19,756 |
20 | Pecos | Texas | 279 | 19,600 |
Ranking | Operator | November 2025 – Daily Production (Bo/d) |
|---|---|---|
1 | Exxon Mobil | 3.106,273 |
2 | EOG | 2.064,299 |
3 | Occidental | 1.806,008 |
4 | Diamondback | 1.698,296 |
5 | Devon Energy | 1.436,920 |
6 | ConocoPhillips | 1.176,689 |
7 | Chevron | 1.084,157 |
8 | Coterra Energy | 1.059,204 |
9 | Permian Resources | 993,971 |
10 | Mewbourne Oil | 905,183 |
11 | SM Energy | 669,403 |
12 | Matador Resources Company | 601,584 |
13 | Apache | 521,287 |
14 | Ovintiv | 412,142 |
15 | BP | 405,724 |
16 | Crescent Energy | 310,306 |
17 | Birch Resources | 182,631 |
18 | Blackbeard | 109,256 |
19 | Surge Energy | 109,953 |
20 | Highpeak Energy | 95,184 |
Forecast Oil Production of The Top 20 Operators
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Permian Gas Production
When and how did it start?
The Permian Basin is the second-largest shale gas-producing region in the United States after the Appalachian Basin (which includes Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio). Gas production in the Permian Basin is primarily a byproduct and the majority of the natural gas production is produced from oil wells, in contrast to the Appalachian Basin where natural gas is produced from natural gas wells.
By the middle of the 1920s, gas was already being harvested from the Permian Basin, but since the middle of 2011, the region’s natural gas output has surged by over 350%. According to the Energy Information Administration, Permian Basin marketed natural gas output topped off a sustained ascent by setting a new annual high in 2021. The region accounted for 17% of U.S. production, up from 5.8% in 2011. The number of rigs working in the Permian Basin has also been increasing at the same time.
In 2022, operators across the Permian have continued to expand their drilling footprint with the addition of nearly 54 rigs since early January. As of the 8th of August, the Permian rig count is now estimated at 329 marking its highest since May 2020.
Gas Production Over The Last 5 Years
Ranking | County | State | Horizontal Well Count | November 2025 – Daily Production (Mcf/d) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Eddy (NM) | New Mexico | 3,874 | 4.586,290 |
2 | Lea | New Mexico | 4,525 | 3.603,416 |
3 | Reeves | Texas | 2,138 | 2.229,361 |
4 | Midland (TX) | Texas | 3,089 | 1.804,136 |
5 | Martin (TX) | Texas | 3,460 | 175, 320 |
6 | Loving | Texas | 1,794 | 1.543,072 |
7 | Culberson | Texas | 625 | 1.115,199 |
8 | Reagan | Texas | 1,103 | 917,466 |
9 | Upton | Texas | 1,471 | 840,779 |
10 | Howard (TX) | Texas | 2,061 | 792,049 |
11 | Glasscock | Texas | 823 | 548,279 |
12 | Ward (TX) | Texas | 826 | 435,120 |
13 | Andrews | Texas | 1,196 | 316,773 |
14 | Irion | Texas | 252 | 147,245 |
15 | Winkler | Texas | 409 | 132,607 |
16 | Crane | Texas | 772 | 112,498 |
17 | Yoakum | Texas | 398 | 66,302 |
18 | Pecos | Texas | 279 | 63,721 |
19 | Ector | Texas | 740 | 56,519 |
20 | Borden | Texas | 190 | 35,716 |
Top 20 Natural Gas Operators [2020 - 2024]
Ranking | Operator | November 2025 – Daily Production (Mcf/d) |
|---|---|---|
1 | Exxon Mobil | 3.204,192 |
2 | EOG | 2.133,098 |
3 | Occidental | 1.888,556 |
4 | Diamondback | 1.711,725 |
5 | Devon Energy | 1.443,200 |
6 | ConocoPhillips | 1.202,660 |
7 | Chevron | 1.088,862 |
8 | Coterra Energy | 1.066,000 |
9 | Permian Resources | 1.004,815 |
10 | Mewbourne Oil | 919,377 |
11 | SM Energy | 669,403 |
12 | Matador Resources Company | 605,251 |
13 | Apache | 521,332 |
14 | Ovintiv | 414,045 |
15 | BP | 405,724 |
16 | Crescent Energy | 310,306 |
17 | Birch Resources | 182,631 |
18 | Blackbeard | 111,993 |
19 | Surge Energy | 110,385 |
20 | Highpeak Energy | 95,236 |
Forecast Gas Production of The Top 20 Operators
Boom of the Permian basin
The Permian boom transformed America’s place in global energy markets, but over the years it’s also been followed up by busts.
The desert outpost of Midland, with a population of 70,000, became slick with oil money during a boom at the beginning of the 1980s. However, Texas’ boom collapsed as the decade’s worldwide oil glut reached the state, decimating the energy sector. The Spraberry oil field, one of the oldest sites in the Permian Basin, is located in the Midland area. For vertical wells, Spraberry formations were fractured for many years, typically in one or two zones. Drilling vertically while simulating the multistage fracturing common to horizontal wells was a novelty. As a result, the eastern Permian Basin experienced a boom in 2005, reversing years of decline.
Acreage purchases in the Permian ranged from $7,000 to $58,000 per acre by 2016, as the industry was recovering from the biggest oil crash since 1986. According to estimates, some positions sold two years later for as much as $70,000 per acre. Prior to COVID, the Permian Basin oil boom pushed the economies of small towns to levels for which they were unprepared, making it difficult for the region’s infrastructure to cope with the rapid inflow of people and businesses. Large acquisitions were being priced at closer to $10,500 per acre in 2021, following the COVID-19 bust.
Here is a much more detailed timeline of the booms and busts of The Permian Basin:
Natural resources obtained in the Permian Basin
Additionally, Sylvite, Langbeinite, Halite (rock salt), Sulfur, and Uranium are all found in the Permian Basin.
After Sylvite was found in 1925, its yields were used to produce Potassium salts (Potash). Halite (rock salt), a byproduct of the Potash mining industry, was also mined. These minerals were deposited after the Permian seas that formed the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations dried up – capping those layers with thousands of feet of mineral-rich evaporites.
One Potash district near Carlsbad, New Mexico, has supplied almost 85% of the Potassium produced in America.
Upstream Oil & Gas Data
Getting the Permian oil & gas data you need shouldn’t be difficult. Some of the top E&P operators like Shell, BlueOx Resources and Bedrock Energy are already using Novi Labs to track major oil & gas trends up to well level.
- Directional survey data
- Well spacing
- Production forecasts
- Vertical and horizontal wells included
- Target formations
Want to discover why E&P operators are turning to Novi Labs to gain a competitive edge?
We provide the most accurate, timely, and complete upstream data, driven by Novi’s industry-leading data science expertise.
Check our Latest Permian basin News and Updates
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