During 1948, production in the North and West-Central Texas district increased to 71,469,000 barrels of oil as compared with 62,127,000 barrels produced in 1947. Wichita was the leading producing county with 10,600,000 barrels, followed closely by Archer County, with 9,400,000 barrels. Drilling activity also showed a gain with a total of 4,009 tests drilled in 1948, of which 2,150 were productive. This represents a drilling increase of 34 per cent over the previous year. Of the total wells drilled, 1,113 were exploratory, which resulted in 202 new producing discoveries as against 144 discovered in 1947. These new discoveries include wildcat pools, deeper producers, and extensions.

Among the more important developments and discoveries in the district were: (1) the continued development of the Sherman field in Grayson County; (2) the development of the Chico field and the discovery of distillate in the Signal Oil Company's Daily Well No. 1 in Wise County; (3) Strawn conglomerate discoveries in northeastern Jack County and central Wise County; (4) the discovery of a producing sand and the extension of the Canyon Reef zone in the Round Top field in Fisher County; (5) the development of the Bartlett field in southwestern Jones County; and (6) the development of the Kirk pool in Comanche County.

Surface mapping, subsurface, and the use of the reflection-seismograph continued to play the leading roles in exploratory methods.