Oil and Gas Industry in Pecos County

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker on the Oil and Gas Industry in Pecos County tells it, and I'm going to do it justice. Pecos County sits in the Permian Basin, one of the most petroleum-rich stretches of earth in the state of Texas. And the story of how all that wealth came to the surface, well, it starts the way a lot of great Texas stories do.

Quietly. Around 1900, someone drilled a well near what the locals had known for years as a seep. An ancient seep.

A place where oil just sort of announced itself from the ground, and people in the area had been using it for lubricating and medicinal purposes long before anyone thought to drill a single inch. That first well, the Turney well, was just the opening line of a much longer story. Then came 1921.

A discovery they called the Miracle Well touched off a short-lived boom, and that name alone tells you something about how people felt when it came in. Miraculous. That boom was brief, but it was a signal, a foreshadowing of what lay beneath.

Because five years later, in 1926, the fabulous Yates oil field arrived. And from that year forward, the Yates field, the Fort Stockton field, and other county fields together produced over 710 million barrels of oil. Seven hundred and ten million barrels.

Let that number sit with you a moment out here on the road. Now, oil wasn't the only thing down there. Natural gas had been known about for years, but here's the thing about gas in those days: it was considered an undesirable by-product of the oil business.

Nobody was in a hurry to do anything with it. What changed that? Workers drilling a water well in 1925.

They were looking for water and found gas instead, and that discovery inspired the first commercial use of gas in the county. Then, around 1948, the Santa Rosa field was discovered, and that spurred exploration that brought in the Puckett field in 1952. And the drilling kept going deeper.

In 1963, that deep drilling tapped the Gomez Field, which proved prolific enough that by 1970 it had produced over 478 billion cubic feet of gas. Billion cubic feet. From a substance that, not so many decades before, people had called an undesirable nuisance.

Today, the marker says it plainly: petroleum is the single most important economic asset of Pecos County. Started with a seep, a little ancient ooze from the earth that people used to grease their wagon wheels. Ended up being the backbone of an entire county's fortune.

That's Pecos County for you.

What the marker says

Located in the petroleum-rich Permian Basin, Pecos is one of the most prolific oil- and gas-producing counties in Texas. The petroleum business here began about 1900 with the drilling of the Turney well near an ancient "seep", a traditional local source of oil for lubricating and medicinal purposes. A short-lived boom in 1921 caused by the discovery of the "Miracle Well" heralded the arrival of the fabulous Yates oil field (1926), indicating the area's great potential oil wealth. Since that year over 710 million barrels of oil have been produced from the Yates, Fort Stockton and other county fields. The presence of natural gas, known for years, was slow to be exploited because gas was considered an undesirable by-product of the oil business. The first commercial use of gas here was inspired after it was found by workers drilling a water well, in 1925. The discovery, about 1948, of Santa Rosa field spurred exploration that brought in the Puckett field in 1952. Subsequent deep drilling tapped many extensive pools, including in 1963 the prolific Gomez Field, which had produced over 478 billion cubic feet of gas as of 1970. Today petroleum is the single most important economic asset of Pecos County.