Anton-Irish sits about fifteen miles northwest of Lubbock, near where Hale, Lamb and Lubbock counties meet, and it is the largest field in one of the least efficient reservoir classes in the Permian Basin. Its Clear Fork pay at roughly 5,350 feet belongs to the Leonardian restricted-platform carbonate play, where recovery efficiencies are the lowest of any Permian carbonate group. Anton-Irish has still produced roughly 200 million barrels, because operators put it through three separate recovery programs in three different eras.
Source: Texas Railroad Commission production filings, aggregated across RRC field designations 03194001. Reported volumes lag the calendar by several months.
The Texas Almanac and Railroad Commission reservoir records both date the discovery to 1944, with the field listed across Hale, Lamb and Lubbock counties; some technical literature says 1945. The discovery well is not documented in readily available public sources. What is clear is that the field was found on the Matador Arch, a structural feature that had produced so little subsequent exploration success that a 2003 discovery there was described as the first significant find on the arch in more than forty years.
Unitization came fast. Around 1950 or 1951 the field was unitized for a produced-gas reinjection and pressure-maintenance project, intended to slow the pressure decline that comes with solution-gas drive in a tight carbonate. The unit was expanded to its present boundaries in 1969, when the first major secondary expansion began with eighty-acre five-spot waterflood patterns. Those two decisions, taken a generation apart, are what carried the field through its middle life.
The third phase began in 1997, when CO2 flooding started at the Anton-Irish Clearfork Unit; published figures later attributed roughly eighty-five percent of unit production to the CO2 flood, with tens of millions of cubic feet a day of CO2 recycled. Then in March 2003 Occidental reprocessed existing 3-D seismic over the deeper section and drilled the Snead 1 to 6,780 feet in Hale County — a Wolfcamp discovery beneath the producing Clear Fork field, with 38 to 42 gravity oil and roughly 12 million barrels estimated for the structure. The unit has long been associated with Occidental Permian.
The producing reservoir is Lower Clear Fork carbonate with a top around 5,348 feet, assigned to the Leonardian restricted-platform play — shallow-water dolomites deposited behind a shelf margin with limited circulation. That setting produces layered, discontinuous permeability and the lowest recovery efficiencies of any Permian Basin carbonate class, which is why the field required successive injection programs rather than one. The 2003 Snead 1 well confirmed a separate Wolfcamp accumulation on structure beneath the Clear Fork pay, found by reprocessing seismic that already existed.
Anton-Irish is a three-stage recovery story. Produced-gas reinjection for pressure maintenance began with unitization around 1951. Waterflooding on eighty-acre five-spot patterns followed the 1969 unit expansion. Miscible CO2 injection started in 1997 and eventually accounted for roughly eighty-five percent of unit production, with large volumes of CO2 recycled through the facilities and substantial water handled alongside it. In a restricted-platform carbonate where primary recovery is exceptionally poor, that sequence is the entire reason the field passed 200 million barrels.
A CO2-supported Clear Fork royalty behaves nothing like a primary-decline interest, and Anton-Irish makes the point emphatically: most of the unit’s current production exists because of tertiary injection, not in spite of decline. Owners here also sit above a separately discovered Wolfcamp accumulation, which raises real questions about what depths a given deed actually conveyed. Both facts belong in a valuation rather than in a footnote. We buy minerals and royalties in Hale and Lamb counties and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
It depends on whether your chain of title contains a depth or formation severance. Many Hale and Lamb county conveyances were made without one, in which case the mineral owner holds all depths. Because a separate Wolfcamp accumulation was confirmed beneath the Clear Fork unit in 2003, that distinction has real consequences for value, and it is worth resolving from the deed records rather than assuming.
CO2 floods wind down gradually rather than stopping abruptly, as injection is curtailed and patterns are converted or blown down. Production tapers over years. That tail is part of what a buyer is pricing, and it is one of the places where offers on tertiary-recovery interests diverge most, because it depends heavily on assumptions about CO2 supply cost and recycle economics.
Yes. Partial sales are common and can be structured by fraction, by tract or by depth interval. Owners often sell a portion to take some value off the table while keeping exposure to the CO2 flood and to the deeper section. We will quote whole and partial interests side by side so you can see what each option is worth before deciding.