New report says new Permian oil intervals keep coming

A new federal assessment says the Permian still has more undiscovered oil and gas in deeper shale targets, especially the Woodford and Barnett formations. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates those zones contain about 1.6 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil and 28.3 trillion cubic feet of gas.

What the report means

The point is not that the Permian is “newly discovered” as a basin, but that deeper layers still hold meaningful drilling potential. USGS said the formations have been producing since the 1990s, but modern drilling and completion techniques make more of that resource economically reachable now.

Why it matters

The assessment reinforces that the Permian remains the core of U.S. oil growth even as some operators talk about plateauing output in parts of the basin. EIA also recently updated Permian play designations and said the basin produced 6.0 million barrels per day of crude in 2025, underscoring how central it remains to U.S. supply.

Industry takeaway

For producers, the message is that the basin still has inventory, but the easy barrels are mostly behind them. That means future growth depends more on technology, well productivity, and selective drilling than on a brand-new frontier.