Mapping the History of Extractive Oil and Gas Industries in Lea County in Light of the Transition to Unconventional Methods

Introduction Motivation Methods Results Conclusions Future Work

Zooming in on the aerial photography sure gave me a shock!

This is what the land looked like everywhere.!

There are over 30,000 wells in Lea County. About half of those are active, and the other half are no longer producing and have been plugged.

There are 16244 active wells in Leas county and 15764 plugged wells. 600-800 wells were drilled a decade in the 1920s through the 1940s.

From the 1950s through the 80s, around 1500 wells were drilled each decade. Starting in the 90s, more and more wells began to be drilled.

In the 90s it was 2700, the 2000s 3300, and the 2010s 4200. There are over 2000 new wells that have been approved since 2017 in addition,

that have not started drilling yet.

The huge increase in well activity was due to the advent of Hydraulic Fracturing techniques to extract oil from the shale layers with low permeability.

Oil is only returned to the well bore from the area around where the rock is fracked, so many wells have to be drilled and fractured to produce large quantities.

In addition to fracturing the rock in order to create channels for the oil to flow through back to the surface, companies have learned the technique of Horizontal Drilling.

Together, fracking and horizontal drilling make up the techniques of the “Unconventional” Oil and Gas extraction process.

I tracked the development of well activity across time around one city, Eunice.

1950-1969

1950-1979

1950-1989

1950-1999

1950-2020

Lastly, I looked at how many wells were in a one mile radius of schools and hospitals in Lea County.

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