The McCamey Field lies in southwestern Upton County on the southern end of the Central Basin Platform, and it is the reason a town exists there at all. In September 1925 the wildcatter George B. McCamey brought in the Baker No. 1, and within six months a tent and frame city of ten thousand people had risen around it. The field produces from shallow Permian carbonates and has been worked through primary depletion and waterflooding ever since. It is a mature property today, long past its boom.
Source: Texas Railroad Commission production filings, aggregated across RRC field designations 58840001, 58840715. Reported volumes lag the calendar by several months.
George B. McCamey completed the Baker No. 1 in September 1925 on what had been ranch country in southwestern Upton County. A Corpus Christi real estate firm organized the original townsite company the day after the well came in. A post office followed on March 5, 1926, the town incorporated on December 27 of that year, and within six months of the discovery roughly ten thousand people were living in a dusty tent and frame city served by its own newspaper. Few Texas boomtowns appeared faster.
The McCamey discovery came a year before the Yates field opened in Crockett and Pecos counties to the south, and the two together made this corner of West Texas one of the most heavily drilled regions in the country. Upton County production climbed steadily through the middle of the century: almost 5,575,000 barrels in 1938, almost 7,859,000 barrels in 1944, more than 7,996,000 barrels in 1948, and more than 15,431,000 barrels in 1956. The Benedum field opened in the northwestern county in 1947 and added 1,800 wells by 1954.
By January 1, 1991 Upton County had produced almost 678,715,000 barrels of crude. The McCamey field itself has long since passed from boom to maintenance. Shallow Permian reservoirs of this type deplete their natural pressure quickly, and the field has been sustained by water injection, workovers and recompletions rather than by new discoveries. Modern horizontal drilling in Upton County targets the Spraberry and Wolfcamp intervals of the Midland Basin, which is a separate business from the shallow production the town was built on.
McCamey produces from Permian Grayburg and San Andres carbonates on the southern end of the Central Basin Platform, deposited in shallow marine and tidal-flat settings. Pay depths are shallow by Permian Basin standards, which is why the field could be developed so fast in 1925 with the rigs then available. The dolomites have moderate porosity and uneven permeability, with tight streaks dividing the better intervals, and trapping combines gentle structural closure with lateral changes in reservoir quality. Well performance varies considerably across short distances as a result.
Waterflooding has carried the McCamey field through most of its modern life. Injected water restores pressure lost to primary depletion and displaces oil toward producing wells, and in shallow Permian carbonates it typically adds a meaningful additional share of the original oil in place. Uneven vertical sweep is the standing problem, since injected water follows the most permeable layer and bypasses pay above and below it, so operators periodically convert wells and rework injection patterns. The realistic expectation is continued slow decline managed by low-cost operations, not renewed growth.
Upton County mineral owners frequently hold two unrelated things at once: a shallow McCamey-area royalty that has paid small amounts for generations, and deeper Spraberry or Wolfcamp rights whose value depends entirely on horizontal drilling activity. The two are valued on completely different methods, and a single offer that blends them without saying so is a warning sign. Old Upton County title is also heavily fractionalized, with interests spread across heirs of families who leased in the 1920s. We buy minerals and royalties in Upton County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
The wildcatter George B. McCamey brought in the Baker No. 1 in September 1925 in southwestern Upton County. The townsite company was organized the day after the well came in, the post office opened on March 5, 1926, and the town incorporated that December. The town and the field both carry his name.
Your check stubs will tell you, because the lease or property numbers differ and horizontal wells usually have far larger and steeply declining volumes. Shallow waterflood income is small and flat; Spraberry and Wolfcamp income starts high and falls fast. If you send us the stubs we will separate them and value each on the appropriate basis.
It depends on your decimal, the current rate on the specific leases, the decline those leases have shown, and whether the operator is still investing in injection. These interests are valued on the length and stability of the income stream rather than on reserve growth. A written offer against real production data is the only meaningful answer.