The KMA Field straddles the Wichita and Archer county line south of Wichita Falls, and its name is simply a set of initials — Kemp, Munger and Allen, the names attached to the acreage where the field was opened in the early 1930s. It came in a generation after the Electra and Burkburnett booms, at a moment when the industry had begun to understand reservoir engineering, and it became one of the better-managed waterfloods in North Texas. The KMA sand still produces today at stripper rates from wells that have been reworked many times over.
By the time KMA was discovered in the early 1930s, the North Texas oil district was thirty years old. Electra had opened in 1911 and Burkburnett had boomed in 1918, and the frantic town-lot drilling of those fields had already taught operators an expensive lesson about what happens when a reservoir is produced too fast by too many wells. KMA arrived just as proration and spacing rules were taking hold in Texas, and it was developed in a comparatively orderly way.
The field developed a substantial cumulative production over the following decades, on the order of a couple of hundred million barrels by most published estimates, from a relatively compact area. Its productive sand became well enough known in the region to be called the KMA sand in its own right. Wichita Falls, already the commercial hub of the North Texas district, supplied the field, and the operators who worked it were a mix of majors and the small independents who have always dominated this part of Texas.
The modern KMA is a mature waterflood. Injection has supported production for decades, wells have been recompleted and re-entered repeatedly, and ownership has fragmented among small operators. As with the other historic Wichita County fields, some production in the area is reported under county-wide administrative field designations rather than the historic name, so owners should not assume their paperwork will say KMA even when their tract is inside the field.
KMA produces principally from a Pennsylvanian Strawn-age sandstone, known regionally as the KMA sand, along with shallower Cisco Group sands found across the North Texas district. The reservoirs lie on the eastern flank of the Bend Arch, where gently dipping strata combine with stratigraphic pinch-outs to trap oil at shallow depths. The KMA sand is better developed and more continuous than the lenticular townsite sands that made Burkburnett famous, which is precisely why the field responded well to organized waterflooding rather than requiring the dense drilling patterns of the 1918 boom.
Waterflooding is the defining feature of KMA’s long production history. Water injection was applied to sweep oil toward producing wells and maintain reservoir pressure, and because the sand is reasonably continuous the flood worked better here than in many neighboring fields. Decades later the field remains flood-supported, with operators managing injection rates, converting wells and reworking completions to keep low-rate producers economic. There is no exotic technology at work — just consistent, low-cost reinvestment in a shallow reservoir that has never required expensive intervention to keep flowing.
A KMA royalty is a long-tail asset. Flood-supported production in a shallow, well-behaved sand can continue for decades at modest rates, which is a fundamentally different proposition from a horizontal shale interest that pays most of its value within a few years. Buyers price that longevity on operating cost, injection performance and well count rather than on decline curves. Owners here often hold small fractional interests with title that has passed through several generations. We buy minerals and royalties in Wichita and Archer counties and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
The initials come from the Kemp, Munger and Allen names associated with the acreage where the field was opened in the early 1930s. The productive Pennsylvanian sandstone became known regionally as the KMA sand, and the field name has been in continuous use in North Texas ever since.
Yes, at stripper rates. The field has been waterflooded for decades and its wells have been reworked and recompleted many times. Individual wells make small volumes, but shallow depths keep workover and operating costs low enough that production has continued through repeated price cycles.
Start with your division order, check detail and any recorded deeds or probate documents in Wichita or Archer County. Interests in these old North Texas fields are frequently fractional and undivided, and the field name on your paperwork may be a county-wide designation rather than KMA. We can help you read the documents before you decide anything.