Conroe Field lies over a deep-seated salt dome in south-central Montgomery County, Texas, roughly forty miles north of Houston. George W. Strake completed the discovery well in December 1931, and within a few years Conroe ranked among the largest oil fields in the country. Most production has come from Eocene Cockfield (Yegua) sands near 5,000 feet, and the field has yielded well over 700 million barrels of oil. Conroe still produces today, and a great many mineral and royalty interests under the city and the surrounding countryside are still held by the families who first leased them.
Source: Texas Railroad Commission production filings, aggregated across RRC field designations 20211001, 20211087, 20211190, 20211040, 20211085. Reported volumes lag the calendar by several months.
George W. Strake, an independent operator working acreage that larger companies had passed over, completed his discovery well about a mile and a half west of Conroe on December 13, 1931. Confirmation wells followed quickly, and the field expanded across south-central Montgomery County during the depths of the Depression. Output climbed from a trickle at the end of 1931 to more than two and a half million barrels in 1932 under proration, and the discovery transformed a quiet timber and farming county into one of the busiest drilling districts in Texas.
In January 1933 the Madeley No. 1 blew out and caught fire, and the well eventually collapsed into a crater several hundred feet across that swallowed rigs and burned oil for weeks. Efforts with dynamite and dirt failed. The kill that finally worked, pumping water into the producing sand through a directionally drilled relief well, is remembered as an early milestone in relief-well engineering. The episode also drove home how quickly the reservoir was being depleted, and it pushed operators toward coordinated pressure management across the field.
Reservoir pressure has been watched closely since April 1933 and has been supported by gas and water injection for most of the field’s life, which is one reason Conroe has produced so long without a conventional secondary flood. Interests were consolidated over several years by a private Houston operator and then sold at the end of 2009 to Denbury Resources, which announced plans to evaluate a large carbon dioxide flood. Denbury itself was acquired by ExxonMobil in 2023, and Conroe today is a long-lived, low-rate legacy field.
Conroe produces from Eocene Cockfield, or Yegua, sandstones draped over a deep-seated, faulted salt dome that never pierced the shallow section. The main pay averages about 5,050 feet, and traps are formed by gentle crestal arching cut by radial and crestal faults rather than by a classic salt overhang. The sands are thick, clean and well connected, which gave the field an unusually strong water drive and an original gas cap. That combination of good rock and active drive explains both the enormous early rates and the long, slow production tail owners see today.
Rather than a late-life secondary project, Conroe has relied on pressure maintenance almost from the beginning, with gas and water injection dating to the years just after the 1933 crater. That early support is why the field avoided the sharp pressure collapse common in Gulf Coast sand reservoirs. The field later drew interest as a carbon dioxide flood candidate: the operator that bought it in 2009 publicly estimated substantial incremental recovery from a CO2 project, but a full field-wide flood has not been installed. Any future flood would depend on carbon dioxide supply and pipeline economics.
A Conroe royalty is usually a small, steady check rather than a growth asset. The field is deep into decline, most wells are stripper-rate, and rapid suburban growth around Conroe has made surface use complicated even where minerals are untouched. What the interest does have is durability, a long production record, and optional upside if carbon dioxide flooding is ever built out. Those characteristics deserve a method-aware valuation instead of a rough multiple of last year’s checks. At Pointer Minerals we buy minerals and royalties in Montgomery County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Very likely yes, at a low rate. Conroe has produced continuously since 1931 and many original tracts still have producing or injection wells on them. If your checks stopped, the interest may be in suspense over a title or address problem rather than shut in, and the operator can confirm the status of the specific lease or unit.
It can, but only as an option rather than a promise. A field-wide carbon dioxide flood at Conroe has been studied and discussed for years without being built. A careful valuation treats the existing decline as the base case and prices any tertiary recovery separately, with a discount for the chance it never happens.
Start with your division orders, check stubs and any probate or deed records in Montgomery County. Those documents show the unit or lease name and your decimal interest. If the paperwork is missing, we can usually reconstruct the chain from county records and Railroad Commission filings and show you what we find at no cost.