Red Wash lies in the eastern Uinta Basin of Uintah County, Utah, northeast of Vernal, and was one of the discoveries that established the basin as an oil province in the early 1950s. It produces from the lower Green River formation — the Douglas Creek and Garden Gulch members — where oil is trapped stratigraphically on the flank of the Red Wash nose. Technical descriptions credit the field with more than eighty separate reservoir zones, and mid-century literature called Red Wash-Walker Hollow Utah’s largest stratigraphic oil field. It has since been managed as a mature waterflood.
The eastern Uinta Basin drew attention after the Second World War as operators extended exploration into Tertiary lacustrine rocks that had not previously been considered prospective. Drilling in the Red Wash area in the early 1950s found oil in the lower Green River formation, and development spread quickly across the trend toward Walker Hollow. Seismic work was used to map the Red Wash nose and its structural configuration at several horizons within the lower Green River — an early example of geophysics guiding development in a stratigraphically trapped field.
By the late 1950s, Red Wash-Walker Hollow was described in the AAPG Bulletin as Utah’s largest stratigraphic oil field, producing from the lowermost Douglas Creek member and the overlying Garden Gulch member. The reservoir architecture is complex: many separate sandstone bodies, each with its own limits, stacked through the section. That meant development was less about drilling a defined structure than about mapping which sands were present and productive at each location, a problem operators worked at for decades.
As primary energy declined, Red Wash was placed under water injection and settled into a long mature phase. Later reservoir studies focused on determining reservoir quality and connectivity across the many productive zones — the practical question being which sands were still worth flooding or recompleting. The field has passed among operators oriented toward mature Uinta Basin assets, and it continues to produce at modest rates. Owners should verify the current operator of their leases from their own statements rather than from historical references.
Red Wash produces from the lower Green River formation, specifically the Douglas Creek and Garden Gulch members deposited along the margin of ancient Lake Uinta. The pay consists of numerous shoreline and deltaic sandstone bodies — described in the technical literature as more than eighty separate reservoir zones — encased in lacustrine shale, with the trap formed stratigraphically where those sands pinch out on the flank of the Red Wash nose rather than by structural closure alone. Sand distribution, not structure, controls where oil is found, which is why detailed mapping has always driven development here.
With so many discrete sandstone reservoirs, Red Wash is flooded and worked zone by zone rather than as one tank. Water injection restores pressure in individual sand bodies and sweeps oil toward producers, but the benefit depends entirely on whether an injector and a producer share the same sand — connectivity, not just proximity. Operators have therefore invested in reservoir quality studies to decide which zones justify injection or recompletion. In a field of this age, production levels track that ongoing technical and capital effort more than they track any single reservoir property.
In a multi-zone stratigraphic field, two neighbouring tracts can perform very differently because they sit above different sands, so location-specific analysis matters more here than in a structurally simple field. Uintah County acreage also frequently involves a mix of fee, state, and federal leasing, which affects development timing. Both points argue for an evaluation of your actual tract rather than a generic multiple. We buy minerals and royalties in Uintah County and provide free written offers with the reasoning included.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Because the field is stratigraphically trapped. Productive sandstone bodies pinch out laterally, so one tract can overlie several good zones while an adjacent one overlies fewer. It reflects geology rather than any error in accounting, and it is exactly why a tract-specific review is the right basis for valuing an interest here.
Revenue stops for the period the wells are down, but your ownership does not change and shut-in wells are often returned to production after workovers. Whether an interest with idle wells is worth selling depends on the operator’s plans and the remaining potential in the zones beneath you, which we can review at no cost.
A written offer typically follows within a few business days of receiving your documents. If you accept, closing depends mainly on how quickly title and any probate matters can be confirmed. We will tell you upfront what we need and give you a realistic timeline rather than a promise we cannot keep.