The Burbank field of western Osage County and eastern Kay County is one of the great sandstone oil fields of America. Discovered by E. W. Marland’s company in 1920, it has produced more than 500 million barrels from a single Pennsylvanian sand and helped make the Osage Nation, on whose mineral estate most of the field sits, famously wealthy in the 1920s. A century later Burbank is still working: waterflooding has run since the 1950s, and CO2 injection has been underway at the North Burbank Unit in recent years.
Marland Oil — the predecessor of Conoco — discovered Burbank in 1920 about 25 miles east of Ponca City. The field sits mostly on the Osage mineral estate, where leases were auctioned under the famous Million Dollar Elm at Pawhuska; Burbank’s flush production drove some of the most spectacular lease bonuses ever paid and funded the quarterly headright payments that made the Osage, per capita, among the wealthiest people in the world in the 1920s.
The Burbank sand — a Red Fork–equivalent Pennsylvanian sandstone — proved thick, continuous, and prolific, and the field dominated northeastern Oklahoma oil activity for decades. After primary depletion, Phillips Petroleum began waterflooding in 1950 and expanded the flood across the field through the early 1960s, a project that added a second producing life measured in decades. Cumulative production passed the 500-million-barrel mark, securing Burbank’s place among the country’s giant fields.
In the modern era the North Burbank Unit has hosted one of Oklahoma’s few CO2 enhanced-recovery projects: after laboratory work showed miscibility required raising reservoir pressure to roughly 1,700 psi, operators repressured the unit and began CO2 injection in the late 2010s. Operatorship of the unit has changed hands in recent years, but the underlying story is constant — a hundred-year-old sandstone still being engineered for more oil.
Burbank produces from a single dominant reservoir: the Burbank sand, a Pennsylvanian Red Fork–equivalent sandstone deposited as a broad, shoestring-like body across western Osage and eastern Kay counties on the Cherokee Platform. The sand’s thickness and lateral continuity are what made the field a giant — and what made it such a strong waterflood candidate, since injected water and CO2 can sweep long distances between wells. Depths are moderate, keeping operating costs manageable through a century of price cycles.
Burbank’s recovery story comes in three acts: flush primary production in the 1920s, the Phillips waterflood that began in 1950 and spread field-wide over the following decade, and CO2 injection at the North Burbank Unit in recent years after operators repressured the reservoir to reach miscibility. Each act extended royalty life that the previous one could not. For owners, the CO2 project matters because it targets oil that ninety years of primary and waterflood recovery left behind — the kind of investment that only happens where substantial reserves remain.
Burbank ownership is unlike anywhere else in Oklahoma. Under the Osage Allotment Act of 1906, the Osage Nation owns the entire mineral estate beneath Osage County, administered through the headright system — surface owners there typically do not own the minerals, and headright interests are restricted and are not something we purchase. Where private mineral ownership does exist — the Kay County portion of the field and fee tracts nearby — we buy minerals and royalties directly in Kay County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Generally no. The 1906 Osage Allotment Act reserved the county-wide mineral estate to the Osage Nation, which distributes royalty income through headrights. If your land is in the Osage County part of the Burbank field, the oil under it is almost certainly part of the Osage mineral estate.
Headrights are federally restricted interests, and transfers are tightly limited by law — they are not conventional mineral interests and we do not purchase them. If you own fee minerals in Kay County or elsewhere outside the Osage mineral estate, those can be sold, and we are glad to make a free written offer.
Yes. The field has produced more than 500 million barrels since 1920, and the North Burbank Unit has been repressured for CO2 injection in recent years — active investment that continues to support production a century after discovery.