The West Texas-Southeastern New Mexico district, since the discovery of the Westbrook field in 1921, has marketed approximately 1,250 million barrels of oil, of which more than 100 million barrels were run in 1939. The drilling campaign of 1939 resulted in important extensions to, and linking of, productive fields. In West Texas nine new pools were discovered, two producing from the Ordovician, two from the Pennsylvanian, and five from the Permian. The New Mexico drilling campaign resulted in the discovery of five new pools, all producing from rocks of Permian age.

New discoveries resulted primarily from subsurface geological studies.

The discovery of three new "pays," the geographical location of Cedar Lake, the relatively shallow depth of the new Ordovician pools, and the information gleaned from unproductive wildcats indicate materially greater expectable reserves than hitherto anticipated.