Oil and Gas at Your Door? (2005 Edition) - Earthworks

Introduction
Where will the oil and gas come from? Since it is likely that oil and gas development will continue
to be promoted in the United States, information on the known locations of oil and gas
reserves will help landowners know whether or not they are living in areas where oil or gas
exploration and drilling may either begin to occur or intensify.
Known deposits of oil occur in more than 30 states, with the majority of current onshore oil production
concentrated in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Wyoming, California, Kansas and New
Mexico. 13 The majority of proved reserves of oil, however, have a slightly different geographic
distribution. (The U.S. Department of Energy defines proved reserves as the volumes of oil or
gas that geological and engineering data have demonstrated with reasonable certainty to be
recoverable in the future, under existing economic and operating conditions.) 14 As seen in
Figure i-2, Texas, Alaska, California, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma are the states with
the largest on-shore proved reserves of oil.
FIGURE i-2. 2003 U.S. CRUDE OIL PROVED RESERVES.
Source: Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy. 15
The geographic distribution of natural gas is similar to that of oil, as natural gas often occurs in
association with oil deposits. In terms of current production, three States (Texas, Louisiana, and
Oklahoma) produce more than half of the natural gas in this country. New Mexico, Wyoming,
Colorado and Kansas are also major gas-producing states. 16
Large deposits of natural gas exist in half of the 50 states, but the deposits in Alaska, Texas,
Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma make up approximately half of the known U.S. dry natural
gas proved reserves. See Figure i-3. Dry natural gas is almost entirely methane, with few
impurities or other hydrocarbons.
i-4