The Arkansas basin in eastern Oklahoma, as in central Arkansas, is a westerly trending topographic and structural trough wherein enormous thicknesses of Paleozoic rocks have been preserved, at least 20,000 feet in the deeper parts. Within this region there are many long, narrow anticlines of major magnitude, generally faulted, and many faults not associated with anticlinal folds.

This region extends south from the northern and western limits of the outcrop of the Hartshorne sandstone to the Choctaw fault. Within it are several gas-producing structures, a few of major importance. Production is mostly from the Hartshorne sandstone (basal Allegheny) of Pennsylvanian age, but there are also gas-bearing sandstones higher in the Allegheny succession of rocks and lower in the Atoka and Wapanucka formations of the Pottsville subdivision. There are not less than 30 gas-bearing zones within the region. The gas-bearing sandstone reservoirs are commonly lenticular, and the producing areas do not necessarily conform with the structural form of the folds.

The most important gas-producing locality, at this time, is the Kinta-Quinton-Featherston district in Haskell and Pittsburg counties. It consists of gas-producing areas scattered along the axis of a west-southwest pitching anticline, faulted on the north flank.

Gas only has been produced within the confines of the region. Some attribute this phenomenon to the degree of metamorphism shown by the carbon ratio of coals, others to conditions of sedimentation prevailing prior to consolidation of the sediments.