Historic Oil Field
Grayburg-Jackson lies on the Northwest Shelf of the Permian Basin in Eddy County, New Mexico, in the shallow carbonate country that first drew drillers to the Artesia area in the 1920s. The field produces from a stacked Permian section — Seven Rivers, Queen, Grayburg, and San Andres — at depths of roughly 1,500 to 4,000 feet. Recent public filings by its operator describe a contiguous leasehold of about 13,700 acres with several hundred producing wells and more than two hundred injection wells, worked primarily as a waterflood.
Eddy County’s oil history begins with the Artesia discovery of 1923, the first commercial oil field in southeastern New Mexico. Drilling spread across the surrounding shelf through the rest of the decade, and the shallow Permian section proved productive over a wide area near the town. The Grayburg-Jackson area was developed as part of that expansion, producing from the same stacked shelf carbonates and sands that characterize the whole Artesia trend. Wells were shallow and inexpensive, which encouraged dense drilling and long operating lives rather than dramatic individual rates.
Like the rest of the shelf, the field moved from primary depletion to injection as the twentieth century progressed. Water injection restored pressure to the depleted shallow zones and swept oil toward producers, and the field settled into the pattern that still defines it: a large well count, modest per-well production, and steady incremental work. Because the pay is stacked across several intervals, operators have repeatedly returned to recomplete wells uphole or downhole rather than drill entirely new locations, giving the field a very long redevelopment history.
In recent years the property has been marketed and traded as a package. Public disclosures describe an acquisition of the Grayburg-Jackson field in late 2023 and a program centred on waterflooding the Seven Rivers formation, with reported production on the order of a few hundred to roughly a thousand barrels a day depending on the interval and period reported. Operator plans and ownership in mature Permian assets change frequently, so owners should confirm who operates their leases from current check detail rather than from press coverage.
The field produces from the Permian Artesia Group and the underlying San Andres on the Northwest Shelf. Seven Rivers, Queen, and Grayburg are shallow shelf deposits of interbedded dolomite, sandstone, and evaporite laid down landward of the Delaware Basin margin, and the San Andres beneath them is a thicker dolomite. The whole package sits between roughly 1,500 and 4,000 feet. Its value lies in stacking: several thin to moderate pay intervals in one wellbore, separated by tight or anhydritic barriers, which allows recompletions but also means each interval must be flooded on its own terms.
Grayburg-Jackson is fundamentally a waterflood property. With more than two hundred injection wells reported against several hundred producers, the field is operated as an engineered displacement project rather than a collection of pumping leases, and recent operator commentary has focused on waterflooding the Seven Rivers interval specifically. Because the pay is stacked and thin-bedded, flood management means directing water into the right zones and keeping injection balanced across a large lease block. Production levels here follow the intensity of that program closely, which is why field output can rise as well as decline.
Shallow stacked fields like this one produce complicated ownership: a single tract may carry several pool decimals, some active and some dormant, plus recompletion potential that never shows on a check stub. New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division reports by pool, which is why your documents may list Seven Rivers, Queen, or Grayburg designations instead of the field name. A proper offer accounts for all of it. We buy minerals and royalties in Eddy County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
It can. In stacked shallow fields, adding injection, recompleting wells into a different interval, or restoring idle wells can increase output measurably. That is what makes valuation here more than a decline-curve exercise: an active operator with a funded program changes the forecast, and an owner should know that before agreeing to a price.
Start with the pool names on your check detail and the depth or formation limits in your lease and any pooling or unit orders. Some leases are limited by depth, which matters if deeper intervals are later developed. Send us what you have and we will lay out what your documents actually cover.
Your ownership does not change, but the operator does control the capital program that drives your revenue, and a new operator often means new division orders and a different pace of work. It is worth reviewing your position when the field trades, which is a good moment to find out what the interest is worth.