From December 1987 to March 1991, 25 prospects in the lower King sand (Upper Pennsylvanian Cisco) play in Concho County, Texas, were tested by several operators. They used combinations of subsurface geology, reconnaissance airborne gas sensing, surface radiometrics, soil magnetic susceptibility, and soil-gas hydrocarbon measurements to define prospects. Six new King sand discoveries or extensions and three deeper Goen discoveries resulted in a 36% exploratory success rate. The total exploration and development cost was approximately $0.67/bbl of proven producing oil reserves.

Final locations for the discovery wells on each of the nine successful prospects were selected primarily on the basis of combined subsurface geology and surface geochemical data.

As examples, we present information about the discovery of Brady Creek and Agaritta fields. Agaritta field is one of the two largest of the new-field discoveries, with estimated proven producing recoverable reserves of 6 million bbl of oil. Its discovery was based on a combination of (1) regional subsurface geologic projection, (2) airborne hydrocarbon sensing, (3) interstitial soil-gas hydrocarbon data, (4) soil magnetic-susceptibility measurements, and (5) surface potassium and uranium concentrations measured by gamma-ray spectrometry.