Citronelle Field in Mobile County is the only oil field in Alabama to have produced more than a hundred million barrels — roughly 160 million by published accounts. It was discovered in 1955 by geologist Everett Eaves and wildcatter Chesley Pruet, whose No. 1 Donovan well found Rodessa sandstone at around twelve thousand feet, and it was the biggest field east of the Mississippi River at the time. The field grew to some five hundred wells. Today it is a stripper operation, and the interests beneath it are widely divided among Mobile County families.
Alabama came to oil late. The state’s first significant discovery was Gilbertown in Choctaw County in 1944, drilled by H. L. Hunt to about 3,700 feet in the Eutaw sand, and it produced only around fifteen million barrels — enough to prove the state had oil, not enough to make it an oil state. Eleven years later Citronelle changed that. Everett Eaves worked out the structure, Chesley Pruet drilled it, and the No. 1 Donovan came in as the largest field east of the Mississippi River at that date.
Development expanded the field to roughly five hundred wells, and the discovery set off drilling across south Alabama that eventually opened the Black Warrior Basin gas fields and the deeper Smackover trend. Citronelle itself, however, has always been a modest-rate field spread over many wells rather than a handful of big producers. Cumulative recovery of about 160 million barrels came out slowly, over decades, and the field has been in the hands of small operators for a long time. Individual Citronelle wells today make a few barrels a day.
Citronelle is often listed as a CO2 field, and that needs a correction. Between August 2012 and September 2014 the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership injected more than 114,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide at the Citronelle site, captured from Alabama Power’s Plant Barry and piped twelve miles to the field. That project was permanent storage in a deep saline formation, not enhanced oil recovery in the producing reservoir. It made Citronelle an important site in the history of American carbon capture without adding a barrel of tertiary oil.
Citronelle produces from Lower Cretaceous Rodessa sandstone — the Donovan sands, named for the discovery well — on a broad structural closure in the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin, which extends from Mississippi into southwest Alabama. The pay is deep for a field of this rate, at around twelve thousand feet, and it is that depth, combined with modest per-well productivity, that has shaped the field’s economics from the beginning. The Rodessa takes its name from the Rodessa field on the Louisiana-Texas line, several hundred miles northwest, where the formation was first described.
Waterflooding has been the working recovery method at Citronelle, sustaining pressure in the Donovan sands across a field of many low-rate wells. The carbon dioxide injected here between 2012 and 2014 went into a deep saline formation as a storage demonstration, not into the oil column, so it did not function as a CO2 flood in the sense that Eucutta or Tinsley are CO2 floods. Proposals to use captured CO2 for enhanced recovery in south Alabama have been studied over the years; owners should treat any such project as prospective until it is actually injecting.
Mobile County royalty from Citronelle is stripper-well income: small monthly amounts from a large number of low-rate wells, with real exposure to oil price and to the operator’s willingness to keep marginal wells online. Alabama interests of this vintage also tend to have title gaps, since sixty-odd years of estates rarely pass without one probate being skipped. We look at the wells and the record together and tell you what each is actually worth, without a fee and without pressure. We buy minerals and royalties in Mobile County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Yes. It is the only field in the state to have passed a hundred million barrels, with roughly 160 million produced since the 1955 discovery, and it was described as the largest field east of the Mississippi River when it came in. Alabama’s earlier discovery at Gilbertown in 1944 produced only around fifteen million barrels by comparison.
No, and the distinction matters. The SECARB Anthropogenic Test injected more than 114,000 metric tons of CO2 captured from Alabama Power’s Plant Barry between August 2012 and September 2014, but it went into a deep saline formation for permanent storage rather than into the producing oil reservoir. It was a carbon storage demonstration, not enhanced oil recovery, and it did not add tertiary oil to the field.
It depends on your decimal interest, the specific wells your lease covers, their recent production, and how the operator handles marginal wells when prices fall. These are small, price-sensitive income streams, and honest valuation means looking at actual well history rather than applying a generic multiple. We will show you the arithmetic on your interest in a free written offer.