State of Texas Advanced Oil and Gas Resource Recovery

The objective of the State of Texas Advanced Resource Recovery program, Project STARR, is to increase royalty income to the Permanent School Fund through the drilling of profitable wells on State lands.

The Bureau of Economic Geology (Bureau) receives $450,000 per year from the State to pay salaries of Bureau researchers involved in Project STARR who analyze State lands properties and databases and then advise operators how to increase production. The State requires the STARR program to be revenue-positive; that is, the Bureau has to cause an amount of new royalty revenue to flow into the Permanent School Fund that exceeds the $900,000 that is appropriated to the program every 2 years by the Legislature. This report summarizes the STARR studies that have been done since the inception of the program and documents that in the 2-year period since the last STARR report, the program is revenue-positive by a factor of 2.7.

The term proved oil reserves refers to oil that will be produced using currently deployed technology. On State Lands, proved oil reserves total 270 million barrels (MMbbl), which is only 8 percent of the 3.43 billion barrels (Bbbl) of oil that is projected to remain across these properties at reservoir abandonment (Holtz and Garrett, 1997). Of this 3.43 Bbbl, 1.6 Bbbl is mobile oil that will not be recovered unless advanced geological, geophysical, and engineering technologies are applied to State Lands reservoirs. This potentially recoverable amount (1.6 Bbbl) nearly equals the cumulative production on State Lands.