Webster Field, often called the Friendswood field, lies in southeastern Harris County, Texas, in what is now the developed corridor between Houston and Clear Lake. Humble Oil and Refining completed the discovery in 1937 over a deep-seated salt dome, and the field became one of the largest Frio producers on the upper Texas coast, with cumulative production reported above 500 million barrels by the early 1980s. Webster was unitized and waterflooded in the 1970s, and mineral interests under subdivisions, roads and commercial property remain in the hands of long-time area families.
Source: Texas Railroad Commission production filings, aggregated across RRC field designations 95731001. Reported volumes lag the calendar by several months.
Humble Oil and Refining Company, later Exxon Company U.S.A., discovered Webster Field in 1937 during the wave of deep-seated salt dome drilling that also opened Anahuac and Hastings. The main pay proved to be Frio sand at roughly 6,000 feet, with a substantial gas cap above the oil column and water beneath it. Development came fast in an area that was then farm and pasture land, and by the early 1980s the Webster Upper Frio reservoir alone had produced more than 500 million barrels, ranking it among the great Gulf Coast oil accumulations.
Because the reservoir had a strong natural drive and a large gas cap, pressure fell only modestly for decades, which delayed the need for secondary recovery. By the early 1970s, however, the operator concluded that a coordinated flood would recover far more oil than continued depletion. The field was unitized and a waterflood system was designed and constructed between 1972 and 1975, eventually injecting well over 50,000 barrels of water per day. Unitization also consolidated hundreds of separate leases into a single allocation formula.
While all this was happening underground, the surface changed completely. NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center opened nearby in the 1960s, and Webster, Friendswood and the Clear Lake area filled with housing and commercial development. Wells and injection facilities were fenced into pockets between subdivisions. Operatorship has moved on from the original major, and the field today produces at modest rates from a mature flood, with mineral ownership widely dispersed among families who sold surface acreage but kept minerals.
Webster produces from Oligocene Frio sandstones draped over a deep-seated salt dome that arched the section without piercing it. The principal reservoir is an Upper Frio sand at about 6,000 feet, with an extensive gas cap over the oil column and an active water leg below. Radial and crestal faulting divides the structure into blocks, but the main sand is thick and continuous enough that the field behaves as a single large reservoir over much of its area. That continuity is what made a field-wide waterflood practical and effective when it was finally built.
Webster ran on natural drive far longer than most Gulf Coast fields, with reservoir pressure dropping only a few hundred pounds over decades of production. The unitized waterflood built between 1972 and 1975 replaced that natural energy with injected water at rates exceeding 50,000 barrels per day, sweeping oil toward producing wells across the unit. A mature flood like this produces at high water cut, meaning most of what comes to surface is water that must be separated and reinjected. Operating cost, not reservoir quality, is usually what sets the economic limit here.
Webster interests are unit royalties in a late-stage waterflood, so income is steady but declining and tied to unit allocation rather than to any well on your land. Many owners here sold surface long ago as the Clear Lake area developed and kept the minerals, and they hold small decimals with long payment histories. Those are exactly the streams that get undervalued by simple multiples of recent checks. At Pointer Minerals we buy minerals and royalties in Harris County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
You may well. In Texas the mineral estate can be severed and retained when the surface is sold, and that happened routinely as the Clear Lake area was developed. Harris County deed records will show whether the minerals were reserved in the surface conveyance and how the interest passed since.
Most of that production happened decades ago, and your decimal reflects your tract’s share of a large unit today. A unitized waterflood spreads current production across every participating tract, so even historically prolific acreage pays modest amounts at this stage of the flood.
Yes. Owners frequently sell a portion and keep the rest, which converts some of the value to cash while leaving exposure to future production. We can quote a full interest, a fractional interest or a term assignment in the same free written offer so you can compare.