With everyone's attention in recent months falling squarely on the US oil industry, and specifically how much longer various shale companies will be able to keep operating now that Saudi Arabia is openly on a war path [7]with US marginal producers, we thought it may be an opportune time to remind readers just where America's Top 100 oil fields are located based on the EIA's most recent report [8]. A recap, if you will, of the domestic oil theater of war with America's "closest ally" in the middle east.
The top 100 oil fields accounted for 20.6 billion barrels of crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves, which was 56% of the U.S. total (36.5 billion barrels).
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A map of all the major reserve locations around the continental US.
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Next, a summary of the changes with America's top 100 fields since the last major ranking was conducted in 2009.
In 2009, the United States had 22.3 billion barrels of crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves, and its top 100 oil fields had 62.3% of that total, or 13.9 billion barrels of proved reserves. In 2013, the United States had 36.5 billion barrels of crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves, and its top 100 U.S. oil fields had 56.4% of that total, or 20.6 billion barrels of proved reserves (Table 1).
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Prominent new additions to the top 10 are two fields from the Eagle Ford Shale Play in Texas, Eagleville and Briscoe Ranch. Eagleville, discovered in 2009, spans 14 counties in South Texas and is the country’s largest oil field as ranked by estimated proved reserves. Prudhoe Bay Field in Alaska (the largest U.S. oil field in 2009) declined in rank to third place, also behind the Spraberry Trend Area of Texas.
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Finally, here is the list of the top 100 fields, ranked by their proved reserves, and as estimated by the EIA.
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Source: EIA [8] [8]
