Maljamar straddles the Lea and Eddy county line on the Northwest Shelf of the Permian Basin, northwest of the towns that later grew up around the Hobbs boom. The Grayburg and San Andres pool was discovered in 1926, making it one of New Mexico’s earliest significant oil discoveries, and the Paddock interval adds further pay. The field is best known today for enhanced recovery: the Maljamar Cooperative Agreement unit hosted a carbon dioxide flood pilot whose results were published and studied throughout the industry, and CO2 injection has shaped the field’s later production history.
The name Maljamar comes from the founder of the Maljamar Oil and Gas Company, William Mitchell, who combined the first letters of his three children’s names — Malcolm, Janet, and Margaret. The Grayburg and San Andres pool was discovered in 1926, ahead of the Hobbs discovery that would define Lea County two years later, and a small company town grew up around the operations. Early production came from shallow Permian dolomite, and the field developed steadily through the 1930s as southeastern New Mexico turned into a serious oil province.
Primary production ran for decades before secondary methods arrived. Leases in the core area were pooled under the Maljamar Cooperative Agreement, creating the MCA unit that would carry the field’s later development. Water injection followed the pattern set across the Permian shelf, restoring pressure in dolomite reservoirs that had been drawn down hard. By the late twentieth century, however, waterflooding was approaching its practical limit, and operators began looking at miscible gas as the way to recover oil that water had left behind in the pore system.
That led to one of the region’s well-documented CO2 projects. A miscible carbon dioxide flood pilot in the MCA unit was formally completed on January 1, 1986, and the results — including history-matched simulation studies — were published through the Society of Petroleum Engineers and remain reference material for CO2 flooding in Permian dolomite. Occidental has been associated with CO2 enhanced recovery in the Maljamar area in later years. As always in a field this old, ownership and operatorship have changed, and owners should verify current operators from their own check detail.
Maljamar produces from Permian carbonates on the Northwest Shelf: the Grayburg, described in the technical literature here as a dolomitic sand, the underlying San Andres dolomite, and the Paddock interval. These are shallow-marine shelf deposits with porosity created and modified by dolomitization, so pay quality varies laterally and vertically within short distances. The layering that results is what makes enhanced recovery both necessary and difficult — injected fluids follow the best-connected intervals unless the flood is engineered around the rock’s internal architecture, which is precisely what the CO2 pilot work here was designed to understand.
Carbon dioxide is Maljamar’s signature. Injected above minimum miscibility pressure, CO2 mixes with residual oil, swells it, and reduces the interfacial tension that traps it in pore throats after a waterflood has passed through. The MCA unit pilot, completed in early 1986, was analyzed in detail and its performance history-matched in published simulation work, giving the field a technical record few of its size can match. Practically, CO2 operation means continuous investment in supply, compression, injection, and recycling — the field produces because that spending continues, not merely because oil remains underground.
CO2 flood interests are among the most frequently mispriced royalty assets. The production profile responds to injection rather than declining smoothly, tract participation in a unit matters more than any single well, and the tail can be long if the operator keeps funding the program. Because New Mexico reports production by pool, your documents may name a Grayburg, San Andres, or Paddock pool rather than Maljamar. We buy minerals and royalties in Lea and Eddy counties and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
It usually extends the life of the production your decimal is tied to, which supports value, but it also makes the forecast dependent on the operator’s continued CO2 purchases and injection spending. A buyer who understands miscible flooding will model that explicitly. One who does not tends to either undervalue the tail or over-assume it, and either way the offer will not reflect the asset.
Not materially. It means the conveyance covers tracts in two counties and must be recorded in both, which we handle as a matter of routine. What matters more is identifying every pool and unit your acreage participates in so nothing is left out of the valuation.
A recent check stub or division order is usually enough to start, and a copy of the deed or probate documents helps confirm what you own. If you cannot find anything, we can often locate the interest from your name and the county. There is no cost and no obligation to accept.