Emma is a San Andres carbonate field in Andrews County, on the Central Basin Platform in the heart of the Permian Basin. It was opened in the late 1930s, during the first decade of Andrews County production, and has been developed and waterflooded through the long history that made Andrews one of the most productive oil counties in the United States. The county has produced well over two and a half billion barrels since 1929. Emma is one contributor to that total: a mature, injection-supported field rather than a headline play.
Source: Texas Railroad Commission production filings, aggregated across RRC field designations 28899001, 28899040, 28899166, 28899249, 28899415, 28899581. Reported volumes lag the calendar by several months.
Andrews County oil begins on December 5, 1929, when the Deep Rock Ogden No. 1 came in as a gusher at 4,345 feet. The timing could hardly have been worse. The stock market had just crashed, and the flood of East Texas crude that followed in 1930 pushed prices toward ten cents a barrel by 1931, so the discovery did not immediately produce the boom that a strike of that size would normally have caused. Development in the county proceeded slowly through the first half of the 1930s.
The Handbook of Texas records that five new oilfields were developed in Andrews County during the 1930s, and Emma belongs to that first group. The San Andres dolomite that underlies much of the Central Basin Platform proved to be extensive, productive and, crucially, shallow enough to be drilled cheaply, which meant that once prices recovered the county could be developed quickly. Twenty-six new fields followed in the 1940s and ninety more in the 1950s, and the county population went from 1,277 in 1940 to more than 5,000 by 1950.
Emma followed the arc that nearly every San Andres field on the platform followed. Primary production drew reservoir pressure down within a couple of decades, and operators converted wells to water injection to restore drive and sweep oil toward producers. By 1982 Andrews County had produced more than two billion barrels cumulatively, and by 2004 the figure stood at 2,783,911,447 barrels since 1929. Production continues today across the county at a fraction of peak rates, sustained by injection and by continual reworking of old wellbores.
Emma produces from the Permian San Andres formation, a shallow-water dolomite deposited across the Central Basin Platform. San Andres reservoirs are characterized by moderate porosity, variable permeability, and pronounced vertical layering, with tight streaks separating the better pay. Trapping on the platform is usually a combination of gentle structural closure and lateral changes in porosity. The dolomite is shallow by Permian standards, which historically allowed close well spacing and cheap workovers, and its layered character is the reason sweep efficiency in a flood depends so heavily on how carefully injection is allocated between zones.
Waterflooding is the recovery method that defines Emma’s modern life, as it does for most San Andres fields on the Central Basin Platform. Injected water restores pressure and displaces oil that primary depletion left in place, and typical San Andres floods have recovered a substantial additional fraction of the oil originally in the reservoir. The engineering issue is always vertical conformance: water preferentially enters the most permeable layer, so operators use profile control, selective completions and pattern changes to spread the sweep. Andrews County’s dense injection infrastructure makes that work relatively inexpensive to sustain.
Andrews County royalty interests are among the most actively traded in Texas, which cuts both ways for owners. There is a real market and offers are easy to get, but the range between a fair offer and a low one can be wide, because value depends on which specific units your tract participates in and how each of those floods is performing. Many owners here also hold deeper rights that were leased separately for horizontal drilling. Both streams should be valued explicitly. We buy minerals and royalties in Andrews County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Because San Andres fields are almost always waterflooded, and a flood only works when the reservoir is managed as one hydraulic system. Operators pool the leases into a unit, allocate production by a participation formula, and pay each owner a decimal based on that formula rather than on a single well. Your decimal reflects your share of the whole unit, not the well nearest your tract.
San Andres reservoirs on the Central Basin Platform are the classic target for carbon dioxide flooding in the United States, and several nearby fields have been flooded for decades. Whether any particular field is converted depends on the operator, on access to carbon dioxide supply and on economics. We do not assert a specific plan for this field, and owners should not assume one when valuing an interest.
Funds normally sit in suspense with the operator until ownership is documented, and after a statutory period they escheat to the Texas Comptroller’s unclaimed property program. Start by contacting the operator’s division order department with your deeds and probate records, and search the state unclaimed property database. We can help identify which operator holds the interest and what it is worth.