Guest “Making American ‘Shale’ Greater Again” by David Middleton
As noted in a previous post, the Permian Basin would rank 4th in the world in natural gas production, if US plays were ranked as nations. Well, a new EIA analysis of “tight oil and shale gas production” ranks the Permian Basin, behind only Saudi Arabia and Russia in crude oil production, above every other oil producing nation on Earth…
Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short Term Energy Outlook (Table 10b), March 2026, and Enverus Note: Other contains the Avalon, Barnett, Dean, and Woodford plays
We added the Avalon, Barnett, Dean, and Woodford plays within the Permian Basin to our estimates by formation for Permian tight oil and shale natural gas production in our March 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). The Permian formations already included the Spraberry, Bone Spring, and Wolfcamp plays. EIA periodically reviews and updates our play designations according to the latest interpretation of geologic information in identifying crude oil and natural gas production from tight oil and shale formations. At the same time, we removed the Delaware and Yeso-Glorieta plays. These modifications are isolated to the Permian formations, resulting in a net increase for tight oil production by 0.2 million barrels per day (b/d) and shale gas production by 0.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) for 2025, compared with previous estimates.
With this update, the shale and tight formations within the Permian Basin produced 6.0 million b/d of crude oil (44% of total U.S. oil production) and 22.2 Bcf/d of dry natural gas (19% of total U.S. marketed gas production) in December 2025.
We measure tight oil and shale gas production two different ways in the STEO: by major geologic formations (STEO Table 10b) and by geography (STEO Tables 4a and 5a). These two methods lead to differences in our estimates because surface-level activity does not distinguish between formations, which can overlap each other like layers of a cake and have differing geographical boundaries. In contrast to the Permian formations, the geographic Permian region produced 6.7 million b/d of crude oil and 29.1 Bcf/d of marketed natural gas in December 2025.
Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO), U.S. Geological Survey; University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology; and Enverus Note: The Wolfcamp play is located throughout the Delaware and Midland sub-basins.
The Bone Spring, Spraberry, and Wolfcamp plays continue to underpin most crude oil and natural gas production in the Permian, and together they are the largest oil producing shale and tight formations in the country, accounting for a combined 5.7 million b/d and 20.8 Bcf/d in December 2025. In our latest review of available geologic information, we determined that the Delaware and Yeso-Glorieta plays were conventional in nature. The removal of the Delaware and Yeso-Glorieta plays accounted for a reduction of 0.1 million b/d and 0.3 Bcf/d in our estimate of production from the geologic Permian and was more than offset overall by the addition of the new plays. Our estimate for the Permian geographic area did not change.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) released reports on the Avalon, the Barnett, and the Woodford plays located within the Permian Basin. The USGS reports identify these plays as continuous accumulations, a category that includes shale and tight formations and is commonly referred to as unconventional. Although USGS has not yet released a geologic report on the Dean (sometimes referred to as the Wolfberry), we also include it because it is a relatively thin formation—nearly indistinguishable from its continuous accumulation neighbors—located vertically between the Spraberry and Wolfcamp plays.
Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short Term Energy Outlook (Table 10b), March 2026, and Enverus
Although the four newly added plays account for approximately 5% of Permian production, recent increases in drilling activity and production growth in the plays have been significant. Compared with 2022, these plays combined have more than doubled (+0.2 million b/d) oil production and increased natural gas production by 72% (+0.6 Bcf/d) in 2025.
Principal contributors: Trinity Manning-Pickett, Troy Cook
Milo, you must be a “domination” devotee. Why is that?
sidabma
March 20, 2026 7:02 pm
We truly are so blessed here in America. Thank you President Trump and Secretary Burgum for opening these “doors” and all this land for oil and gas drilling and mining.
I have only one request – That Secretary Wright would investigate how America, especially for creating electricity at our power plants – How to increase the Energy Efficiency of these power plants. Todays power plants are operating at the +-50% area. Natural gas power plants with a bit of help can operate at over 90% energy efficiency.
President Trump you have made America Energy Superior and are on track to doing the same thing with the AI Industry. AI requires a lot of electricity produced. How about having America lead the way also on power plant Energy Efficiency. The combusted exhaust can be turned into good paying full time jobs and money. Imagine power plants with zero emissions.
Secretary Wright I would like to meet with you to discuss Community Power Plants. They can be coal or they can be natural gas. We have the technology to make these coal power plants operate almost as clean as the natural gas ones. Coal has a bunch of benefits that natural gas does not have as you already know
Could Secretary Zelden please put natural gas on the DOGE list? This energy that we have to pull out of the ground and then process and then pipeline is too precious to continue wasting. The atmosphere does not need the Btu’s or the CO2. We have a much better plan for utilizing those components.
Australia and UK are converting their fleets to wind power until the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.
The immediate goal is to get electric tractors and trucks so the summer harvest can be reaped and shipped to market.
The head of Australia’s Climate Change™ Authority, Anthea Harris, has been given a new role to secure liquid fuel supplies now that NetZero has been achieved sooner than expected.
NetZero is not turning out quite as expected though. No fuel at pumps and no food at supermarkets is not what the city folk thought NetZero actually meant. It is not as cute and cuddly at it was advertised.
Anthea Harris is formerly the CEO of the Australian Energy Regulator and the former Chief Executive Officer of the Energy Security Board. Prior to this,
An excellent article Dave,
Beyond the first order liquid gas products lies to the solids in the form or two well known macerals. It is these where the infinite hydrocarbon resource lies. Our small group has run trials over a 5-year span which shows these solids can be converted in seam into highly saleable product with add ones from ethane to hexane being created in both coals and shales.
Further with most conventional reservoirs yielding only 30% of the OIP and GIP then there is a long way to go before Armageddon with bacteria able to mobilise to behind the pie resources.
The nation is saddled with millions of abandoned or soon-to-be-abandoned oil and gas wells, which can pollute water supplies and leak climate-warming methane.
Cleaning up—i.e. “decommissioning”—these wells could cost over $270 billion, but oil and gas operators only have about 1 percent of this amount in financial assurance. Since a large portion of these wells are orphaned or at risk of being orphaned, a federal production fee along with regulatory reform may be needed to ensure that most of these wells are plugged and well sites are cleaned up.
Oh, cry me a river over those nasty oil slicks and smokestacks—meanwhile your precious green saviors are out here running an open-air abattoir.
Wind turbines? Giant, taxpayer-funded bird-blenders and bat-vaporizers – chopping up half a million to over a million birds and hundreds of thousands to a million-plus bats every year in the US alone, at least when those blades are actually spinning. (And yes, the rare migratory ones we pretend to care about get hit hardest.)
Solar farms? Fake lakes that lure birds to smash into panels, or those fancy concentrating towers straight-up incineratingthem mid-flight like tiny feathered fireworks—tens of thousands fried or splatted annually, especially at spots like Ivanpah.
Bonus eco-hero points: turbines glow, heat up, and basically act as industrial bug zappers, sucking in and splattering millions of insects (already crashing hard) that birds and bats need to eat. All this glorious carnage happens precisely when they’re “working” and virtue-signaling hardest.
But sure, keep clutching pearls about fossil fuels while ignoring the feathered and furry body count piling up under your subsidized windmills and mirrors. Nothing says “save the planet” like turning skies into slaughter zones for feel-good electricity.
As a child, I remember seeing oil/gas being emitted in a swampy area on a relative’s farm in Michigan. Later, commercial drilling led to placement of an oil well there.
It turns out that oil and natural gas are natural products and our extraction of them often reduces natural “pollution.”
Oh no climate warming methane which is like the boogey man. The we have the blanket claim that abandonded wells can pollute water supplies with no data on likelihood.
The funniest part is the whole garbage is based upon the idea of orphaned wells because it was written back in Biden era when net-zero was a thing to US government (you seem to fail to check the garbage you link continually). You now have drill baby drill so the whole report can basically be used for loo paper.
Really? The US obviously believes in “domination”, but it doesn’t seem to be doing the country much good.
Maybe it should just stick to “dominating” Country and Western music. About as effective as anything else, and a lot cheaper.
You must be an IRGC devotee.
Milo, you must be a “domination” devotee. Why is that?
We truly are so blessed here in America. Thank you President Trump and Secretary Burgum for opening these “doors” and all this land for oil and gas drilling and mining.
I have only one request – That Secretary Wright would investigate how America, especially for creating electricity at our power plants – How to increase the Energy Efficiency of these power plants. Todays power plants are operating at the +-50% area. Natural gas power plants with a bit of help can operate at over 90% energy efficiency.
President Trump you have made America Energy Superior and are on track to doing the same thing with the AI Industry. AI requires a lot of electricity produced. How about having America lead the way also on power plant Energy Efficiency. The combusted exhaust can be turned into good paying full time jobs and money. Imagine power plants with zero emissions.
Secretary Wright I would like to meet with you to discuss Community Power Plants. They can be coal or they can be natural gas. We have the technology to make these coal power plants operate almost as clean as the natural gas ones. Coal has a bunch of benefits that natural gas does not have as you already know
Could Secretary Zelden please put natural gas on the DOGE list? This energy that we have to pull out of the ground and then process and then pipeline is too precious to continue wasting. The atmosphere does not need the Btu’s or the CO2. We have a much better plan for utilizing those components.
“Imagine power plants with zero emissions.”
I hope your roundabout phrasing here is just a call for us to increase nuclear energy production. If so, then yes, we should do that.
“Natural gas power plants with a bit of help can operate at over 90% energy efficiency.”
I take it that you did not study thermodynamics in your physical science courses.
Australia and UK are converting their fleets to wind power until the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.
The immediate goal is to get electric tractors and trucks so the summer harvest can be reaped and shipped to market.
The head of Australia’s Climate Change™ Authority, Anthea Harris, has been given a new role to secure liquid fuel supplies now that NetZero has been achieved sooner than expected.
NetZero is not turning out quite as expected though. No fuel at pumps and no food at supermarkets is not what the city folk thought NetZero actually meant. It is not as cute and cuddly at it was advertised.
You might think I made up the bit about Anthea Harris – nope – it s the biggest joke yet on the Australian voters.
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/appointment-fuel-supply-taskforce-coordinator
Anthea Harris is formerly the CEO of the Australian Energy Regulator and the former Chief Executive Officer of the Energy Security Board. Prior to this,
Anthea.
Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom. Anthea was her stoner sister.
Cannabis seed oil makes good diesel, man.
Cannabis seed oil makes good diesel, man.
California could be a major oil and gas producer but they suffer from cranial-rectal inversion, making it difficult to see reality.
An excellent article Dave,
Beyond the first order liquid gas products lies to the solids in the form or two well known macerals. It is these where the infinite hydrocarbon resource lies. Our small group has run trials over a 5-year span which shows these solids can be converted in seam into highly saleable product with add ones from ethane to hexane being created in both coals and shales.
Further with most conventional reservoirs yielding only 30% of the OIP and GIP then there is a long way to go before Armageddon with bacteria able to mobilise to behind the pie resources.
TABLE 1.
AI helps me read this table, but did not provide the data source. Please provide a reference, Ian.
Scott, A.R. (1999). Improving Coal Gas Recovery with Microbially Enhanced Coalbed Methane. In: Mastalerz, M., Glikson, M., Golding, S.D. (eds) Coalbed Methane: Scientific, Environmental and Economic Evaluation. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1062-6_7
https://ohiorivervalleyinstitute.org/filling-the-hole-a-federal-solution-to-cleaning-up-americas-orphaned-and-abandoned-oil-and-gas-wells/
Oh, cry me a river over those nasty oil slicks and smokestacks—meanwhile your precious green saviors are out here running an open-air abattoir.
Wind turbines? Giant, taxpayer-funded bird-blenders and bat-vaporizers – chopping up half a million to over a million birds and hundreds of thousands to a million-plus bats every year in the US alone, at least when those blades are actually spinning. (And yes, the rare migratory ones we pretend to care about get hit hardest.)
Solar farms? Fake lakes that lure birds to smash into panels, or those fancy concentrating towers straight-up incinerating them mid-flight like tiny feathered fireworks—tens of thousands fried or splatted annually, especially at spots like Ivanpah.
Bonus eco-hero points: turbines glow, heat up, and basically act as industrial bug zappers, sucking in and splattering millions of insects (already crashing hard) that birds and bats need to eat. All this glorious carnage happens precisely when they’re “working” and virtue-signaling hardest.
But sure, keep clutching pearls about fossil fuels while ignoring the feathered and furry body count piling up under your subsidized windmills and mirrors. Nothing says “save the planet” like turning skies into slaughter zones for feel-good electricity.
Your green halo’s looking a little… bloody.
Not to mention the demise of right whale population and dolphins from off shore wind farms proposed or operational.
As a child, I remember seeing oil/gas being emitted in a swampy area on a relative’s farm in Michigan. Later, commercial drilling led to placement of an oil well there.
It turns out that oil and natural gas are natural products and our extraction of them often reduces natural “pollution.”
Oh no climate warming methane which is like the boogey man. The we have the blanket claim that abandonded wells can pollute water supplies with no data on likelihood.
The funniest part is the whole garbage is based upon the idea of orphaned wells because it was written back in Biden era when net-zero was a thing to US government (you seem to fail to check the garbage you link continually). You now have drill baby drill so the whole report can basically be used for loo paper.
4 replies to your post, and counting. All deflecting from the sad facts you documented. Add a $ figure, to sum up worldwide.
So… Counting isn’t part of your repertoir?
We are all still waiting for these orphaned wells to appear 🙂