Val Verde Basin

The Val Verde Basin is a marginal foreland basin located in West Texas, just southeast of the Midland Basin. The Val Verde is a sub-basin of the larger Permian Basin and is roughly 24–40 km wide by 240 km long. It is an unconventional system and its sediments were deposited during a long period of flooding during the Middle to Late Cretaceous. This flooding event is referred to as the Western Interior Seaway, and many basins in the Western United States can attribute their oil and gas producing basins to carbonate deposition during this time period.

The Val Verde's structural architecture devolved mainly during the Early Carboniferous to Late Permian period during the Ouachita orogeny. This produced minor structural folding throughout the basin. Today, the Val Verde Basin is a major gas producing system and has recently been recognized for harboring over 5 tcf (trillion cubic feet) of natural gas.

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