Hastings Field straddles the Brazoria and Galveston county line a few miles north of Alvin and about eighteen miles south of Houston. Stanolind Oil and Gas completed the discovery well in December 1934, and the field grew into one of the largest Frio sand accumulations on the upper Texas coast, roughly five miles long and four miles wide. Cumulative production passed half a billion barrels decades ago. After a long decline, Hastings was reopened as a carbon dioxide flood in 2010, giving owners in the West Hastings Unit a second production life.
Source: Texas Railroad Commission production filings, aggregated across RRC field designations 39603001, 39598001, 39597815. Reported volumes lag the calendar by several months.
Stanolind Oil and Gas, a predecessor of Amoco, completed the Hastings discovery on December 23, 1934, in the middle of the great Gulf Coast salt dome drilling wave that also opened Anahuac, Tom O’Connor and West Ranch. Development moved fast because the productive sands sat between roughly 5,000 and 10,000 feet and the structure was large. The field was split in practice into the West Hastings area in Brazoria County and the East Hastings area in Galveston County, and by the early 1980s those two areas together had produced well over 600 million barrels.
Peak field production of roughly 75,000 barrels a day came in 1977, supported by water injection, and the long decline that followed is the ordinary story of a mature Frio waterflood. What was not ordinary was the second act. Denbury Resources bought the field from Venoco in 2009, restored the wells and facilities, and began injecting carbon dioxide into the West Hastings Unit in December 2010. Tertiary oil production followed in 2012, and initial proved tertiary reserves were booked that year.
The carbon dioxide arrives through a long pipeline system built to move industrial and natural-source CO2 across the Gulf Coast, and Hastings has served as a research site for measuring how injected carbon dioxide behaves underground. Denbury was acquired by ExxonMobil in 2023, so the field is now associated with a much larger operator with its own carbon capture ambitions. For royalty owners, the practical effect of all this is that Hastings volumes reflect an active tertiary project, not simple primary decline.
Hastings sits above a deep-seated salt dome that gently arched the overlying section without piercing it. Production comes from stacked Oligocene Frio sandstones, with additional pay in Vicksburg and Marginulina intervals, at depths ranging from about 5,000 to 10,000 feet. Faulting off the dome crest divides the accumulation into separate fault blocks, which is why the field developed as distinct east and west areas with their own reservoir behavior. The Frio sands are porous, laterally continuous and well suited to flooding, which is exactly why the field was chosen for waterflooding first and carbon dioxide injection later.
Water injection carried Hastings through its mature years and drove the 1977 production peak. The tertiary phase began when carbon dioxide injection started in the West Hastings Unit in December 2010, with tertiary oil production beginning in 2012. Injected CO2 mixes with residual oil left behind by water, reducing viscosity and freeing crude that a waterflood cannot move. Because the CO2 is purchased and recycled, project economics are sensitive to oil prices, carbon dioxide supply and pipeline costs, and tertiary volumes can move up or down for reasons unrelated to reservoir quality.
Hastings royalties behave differently from ordinary stripper interests because a working tertiary flood can hold or even raise production for years. That cuts both ways: flood response is uneven across the unit, unit participation factors matter as much as gross production, and an operator can slow injection when economics turn. Valuing a Hastings interest well means looking at the specific tract, the unit allocation and the flood stage, not just recent check totals. At Pointer Minerals we buy minerals and royalties in Brazoria and Galveston counties and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Most likely because of the carbon dioxide flood. Injection into the West Hastings Unit began in December 2010 and tertiary oil followed in 2012, which restored production on tracts that had been nearly depleted under waterflood. Your check reflects your allocated share of unit production rather than a single well on your acreage.
Yes. Inside a unit you are paid on a participation factor rather than on wells physically on your tract, so two neighboring owners with identical acreage can receive very different amounts. Any serious valuation starts with your unit allocation and the tract it came from.
It takes more work. Tertiary production does not decline in a smooth curve, and it depends on injection volumes, carbon dioxide supply and price levels. We model the flood stage and the unit allocation separately instead of applying a flat multiple, and we explain the assumptions in the written offer.