Hall-Gurney, discovered in 1931 in Russell and Barton counties, has produced more than 150 million barrels — about 152.4 million by Kansas Geological Survey accounting, from roughly 1,100 wells. Its pay is oomoldic Lansing-Kansas City limestone at around 2,900 feet, thin but remarkably persistent. The field is best known outside Kansas for hosting the state’s first carbon dioxide enhanced-recovery pilot, a Department of Energy-supported miscible flood test that began injecting in December 2003. For owners, Hall-Gurney is a shallow, flood-supported field with long-lived, low-rate production and heavily fragmented royalty title.
Hall-Gurney came in during 1931, part of the wave of Central Kansas Uplift discoveries that also produced Bemis-Shutts, Trapp and Chase-Silica. Russell County was transformed by it. Shallow depths and reliable Lansing-Kansas City pay let operators drill on tight spacing across farm sections, and leasing spread quickly through the surrounding townships. The mineral reservations executed during that decade — often carved out when farm ground changed hands — are the origin of most of the small undivided interests that appear in Russell County records today.
Waterflooding arrived in force during the 1950s and 1960s and became the defining activity of the field’s second half-century. Injection restored pressure to depleted Lansing-Kansas City patterns and swept oil toward producers, sustaining a large well population at modest rates. As with the rest of the uplift, operatorship moved steadily downward in company size, from majors to Kansas independents to specialists in marginal production. Cumulative output passed 150 million barrels, an unusual figure for a field producing from a single thin carbonate interval.
In the 2000s Hall-Gurney became a laboratory. A Department of Energy-supported pilot injected carbon dioxide into the Lansing-Kansas City "C" zone through one injector serving three producing wells, running from December 2003 to June 2005, with roughly 16 million pounds of CO2 injected and 4D seismic used to image the flood front. Results were modest in volume but valuable technically, and the project remains the reference case for CO2 flooding in shallow Kansas oomoldic carbonates.
Hall-Gurney produces from oomoldic limestone in the Pennsylvanian Lansing-Kansas City group at roughly 2,900 feet — a thin reservoir whose porosity comes from dissolved ooids rather than from open intergranular space. That fabric holds a great deal of oil but connects poorly, which is why recovery factors in these zones are low and why the field was such an attractive test bed for enhanced recovery. The reservoir drapes over Central Kansas Uplift structure, creating the closures that trap oil. Small changes in ooid preservation across a lease can produce sharply different well performance.
Two recovery methods matter here. Waterflooding has carried Hall-Gurney since mid-century, injecting produced brine into the Lansing-Kansas City to maintain pressure and sweep oil, and it remains the backbone of production. Layered on top is the CO2 pilot: continuous carbon dioxide injection from December 2003 through June 2005 in a single-injector, three-producer pattern, monitored with time-lapse seismic. Volumes recovered were small, but the pilot demonstrated miscible displacement in shallow oomoldic carbonate. Owners should treat an operator’s stated EOR intentions as material information — and as something to verify, not assume.
Interests in Hall-Gurney are typically small, decades old, and attached to leases whose value depends heavily on flood status. A tract inside an active injection pattern behaves nothing like a tract on depletion, and any mention of enhanced recovery deserves scrutiny rather than excitement. We price by lease, unit participation and recovery method, and we say plainly when a stated EOR plan is speculative. Pointer Minerals buys direct with no listing process: we buy minerals and royalties in Russell and Barton counties and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Not by itself. The pilot was a small, time-limited technical demonstration that ended in 2005, not a field-wide flood. CO2 projects can raise recovery meaningfully where they are actually deployed at scale, but a historical pilot on a few wells is not evidence that your lease will be flooded. We value what is producing and what is contractually committed, and treat announced future projects cautiously.
Shallow Kansas wells are inexpensive to operate, so they stay economic at rates that would retire a deep well immediately. Combined with water injection support, that is why Hall-Gurney leases drilled in the 1930s and 1940s are still on the pump. Longevity, not rate, is the value driver, and it is what buyers underwrite.
Not materially. Each county’s tracts are described and recorded separately, so a sale simply involves recording the conveyance in both counties. What matters more is whether title is clear in each and whether the tracts are committed to the same or different units. We handle multi-county Kansas conveyances routinely and will lay out exactly what recording is required.