The deepest interior cratonic basin in the lower 48 states, holding as much as 40,000 ft of Cambrian through Permian rock. The Devonian to Mississippian Woodford Shale sources most of the basin's hydrocarbons and charges the stacked Mississippian and Pennsylvanian reservoirs targeted by the SCOOP, STACK and Western Anadarko horizontal plays.
The basin began as the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, a Cambrian failed rift. Thermal subsidence built a thick early Paleozoic carbonate section. Late Mississippian to Early Permian compression tied to the Ouachita orogeny then inverted the rift, raising the Wichita-Amarillo uplift along the Wichita fault system and driving rapid subsidence of the trough beside it. Deformation peaked in Atokan time.
Late Devonian sea level rise drowned a karsted Hunton surface and laid down the anoxic, siliceous Woodford Shale. Mississippian carbonate ramps then built out across the shelf: chert-rich Osage grainstones, argillaceous and calcareous Meramec siltstones, and Sycamore siliceous limestones to the south. As the uplifts rose, Springer, Morrow, Atoka and Cherokee shales and sands filled the deepening trough.
The Woodford is the basin's dominant source rock, estimated to have generated more than 300 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Maturity rises toward the deep basin, which sets the fluid type in each play: oil on the shelf, condensate and wet gas in between, dry gas in the trough.
About two thirds of the basin's cumulative production is natural gas, but horizontal drilling has shifted activity toward liquids. The STACK is predominantly oil, the SCOOP spans oil, condensate and liquids-rich gas, and Western Anadarko Cherokee wells produce a balanced mix of oil, NGLs and gas.
Diagram 1. A generalized block from the gentle northeastern shelf to the Wichita Mountain front, showing the asymmetric trough, the Wichita fault system and where each play sits. Select a unit for its lithology, thickness and reservoir data. Units in navy are TRP targets.
Diagram 2. Devonian through Permian section with lithology, thickness and depth data, each unit's role as source, reservoir or seal, and which play targets it.
| Unit | Age | Role | Description | Key data |
|---|
Grady, McClain, Garvin and Stephens counties, south of Oklahoma City. Stacked Woodford, Sycamore and Springer (Goddard) targets across oil and condensate windows. Operators include Continental Resources and Gulfport Energy.
Canadian, Blaine and Kingfisher counties, northwest of Oklahoma City. Meramec at 7,000 to 8,500 ft in Kingfisher County, deepening west, above Osage and Woodford. Devon holds about 520,000 net acres across the basin.
Ellis, Roger Mills, Dewey and Custer counties near the Texas line. Horizontal Cherokee Group wells, with Mewbourne Oil the most active operator. SandRidge plans ten new Cherokee wells in 2026.
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