Forget the Middle East!

The Permian Basin's Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations in West Texas and New Mexico hold the most potential oil and gas resources ever assessed, the U.S. Interior Department said Thursday.

The region in the Permian's western Delaware Basin holds more than twice as much oil as the largest previous assessment - the Wolfcamp shale in the Permian's separate Midland Basin southeast of Midland. That study was completed two years ago.

To put the new results into perspective, the Delaware Basin's Wolfcamp and Bone Spring plays would hold almost seven times as much oil as North Dakota's Bakken shale.

The Wolfcamp shale and overlying Bone Spring in the Permian's booming Delaware Basin hold an estimate 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's new assessment.
SOURCE