The Levelland Field in Hockley and Cochran counties, Texas is the northern anchor of the great San Andres trend on the Permian Basin’s Northwest Shelf — the twin of the adjoining Slaughter Field. Discovered in 1945, Levelland grew into a sprawling complex of units whose combined output with Slaughter exceeds 1.6 billion barrels from some 6,000 wells. Decades of waterflooding and a series of CO2 projects have kept the San Andres dolomite paying beneath thousands of surface tracts, making this some of the most durable royalty acreage on the South Plains.
Source: Texas Railroad Commission production filings, aggregated across RRC field designations 53411001, 53411852, 53411070, 53411426. Reported volumes lag the calendar by several months.
Levelland was discovered in 1945, extending the shallow-shelf San Andres play that the Slaughter discovery had opened in nearby Cochran and Hockley county acreage a decade earlier. Post-war development was fast: the flat, farmable land of the South Plains filled with pumping units as operators drilled the shallow dolomite on close spacing. By the early 1950s the field was producing more than 11 million barrels a year and had become a mainstay of the Hockley County economy alongside the city that shares its name.
As pressure depleted, the field was carved into waterflood units through the 1950s and 1960s, a structure that still defines ownership today. Injection arrested the field’s decline and set up decades of steady secondary recovery across dozens of units operated by majors and large independents. Unitization also standardized royalty administration: most owners in the field are paid on unit participation rather than individual leases.
In the tertiary era, Levelland became a testing ground for miscible recovery. Amoco installed a contained CO2 pilot in the San Andres in 1978, and a 13-acre Levelland Unit CO2 tertiary pilot followed to measure incremental recovery from fully waterflooded rock. CO2 flooding subsequently spread through the greater Levelland–Slaughter complex, where injection continues to support production today under a roster of operators focused on mature carbonate floods.
Levelland produces from the San Andres dolomite at roughly 4,900 feet on the Northwest Shelf — a gently dipping Permian carbonate ramp rather than a sharply defined structure. The pay is a stratigraphic trap: porous dolomite pinching out updip into tight, evaporite-plugged rock. San Andres dolomite holds enormous oil in place but recovers a modest fraction under primary depletion, which is why the field’s history is really a history of injection — first water, then CO2 — working more oil out of the same thick, layered reservoir.
Levelland’s recovery story spans every era: primary depletion in the 1940s and 1950s, systematic waterflooding from the 1950s onward, and CO2 miscible projects pioneered with pilots in 1978 and the early 1980s. The greater Levelland–Slaughter complex became one of the proving grounds for San Andres CO2 flooding, and injection-supported units continue producing decades after skeptics would have written them off. For royalty owners, flood support translates into flat, persistent decline curves — the kind of production profile that keeps checks arriving for generations rather than years.
Royalty and mineral interests across the Levelland complex are long-duration assets: unitized, flood-supported, and backed by three-quarters of a century of production history. Because ownership here passes through farm families and estates, many interests are fractional and under-documented, and owners are sometimes offered prices that ignore CO2-era longevity. Knowing your unit, your decimal, and the flood status of your acreage is essential before any sale. We buy minerals and royalties in Hockley and Cochran counties and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Yes. The Levelland–Slaughter complex has produced over 1.6 billion barrels from roughly 6,000 wells and remains active, with waterflood and CO2 injection continuing to support San Andres production across its units.
The field is divided among many units developed by majors such as Amoco and their successors, with mature-asset independents holding much of the complex in recent decades. Your division order or check stub identifies the operator of your specific unit.
Valuation should reflect your unit decimal, recent production, and the slow declines typical of flooded San Andres rock — not a simple multiple of a few checks. We provide free written offers so you can see a flood-aware valuation before deciding anything.