page_title: Spraberry Trend
hierarchical_section_title: Spraberry Trend
caption_attribution_description: English: Location of the Spraberry Trend in Texas, with major and nearby cities. All data on this map is in the public domain; created by me in ArcGIS 9.3.
context_page_description: The Spraberry Trend is a large oil field in the Permian Basin of West Texas, covering large parts of six counties, and having a total area of approximately 2,500 square miles. It is named for Abner Spraberry, the Dawson County farmer who owned the land containing the 1943 discovery well. The Spraberry Trend is itself part of a larger oil-producing region known as the Spraberry-Dean Play, within the Midland Basin. Discovery and development of the field began the postwar economic boom in the nearby city of Midland in the early 1950s. The oil in the Spraberry, however, proved difficult to recover. After about three years of enthusiastic drilling, during which most of the initially promising wells showed precipitous and mysterious production declines, the area was dubbed "the world's largest unrecoverable oil reserve."
  In 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy ranked The Spraberry Trend third in the United States by total proved reserves, and seventh in total production. Estimated reserves for the entire Spraberry-Dean unit exceeded 10 billion barrels, and by the end of 1994, the field had reported a total production of 924 million barrels.
context_section_description: The Spraberry Trend (also known as the Spraberry Field, Spraberry Oil Field, and Spraberry Formation; sometimes erroneously written as Sprayberry) is a large oil field in the Permian Basin of West Texas, covering large parts of six counties, and having a total area of approximately 2,500 square miles (6,500 km²). It is named for Abner Spraberry, the Dawson County farmer who owned the land containing the 1943 discovery well. The Spraberry Trend is itself part of a larger oil-producing region known as the Spraberry-Dean Play, within the Midland Basin. Discovery and development of the field began the postwar economic boom in the nearby city of Midland in the early 1950s. The oil in the Spraberry, however, proved difficult to recover. After about three years of enthusiastic drilling, during which most of the initially promising wells showed precipitous and mysterious production declines, the area was dubbed "the world's largest unrecoverable oil reserve."
  In 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy ranked The Spraberry Trend third in the United States by total proved reserves, and seventh in total production. Estimated reserves for the entire Spraberry-Dean unit exceeded 10 billion barrels (1.6×10⁹ m³), and by the end of 1994, the field had reported a total production of 924 million barrels (146,900,000 m³).
caption: Location of the Spraberry Trend in Texas, showing major and nearby cities.  Black lines are county boundaries.
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