Barbers Hill salt dome, located in the Texas Coastal Plain near Houston, has a long history of resource exploitation, including oil and brine production, storage of hydrocarbons in solution-mined caverns within the salt stock, and disposal of brine into the cap rock. Industrial and municipal facilities are concentrated over the dome, and large amounts of ground water are produced within 12 mi (20 km) of the structure. Subsurface data from closely spaced petroleum, brine-disposal, and water wells were used in characterizing near-dome hydrogeology at Barbers Hill.

The Permian Spraberry Trend, once regarded as the world's largest uneconomic oil field, is a prime candidate for reserve growth through extended conventional recovery. More than 9.4 billion barrels (Bbbl) of oil was discovered in the trend, which is part of a giant oil play (10.5 Bbbl of in-place oil) that produces from submarine fan reservoirs of the Spraberry and Dean Formations in the Midland Basin, West Texas.

Subsidence at salt domes results from man-induced and natural removal of salt, cap rock, minerals within the cap rock, and supradomal fluids. In the Houston diaper province, Frasch sulfur mining as caused subsidence bowls and collapse sinkholes at 12 of the 14 sulfur productive domes. Vertical subsidence owing to sulfur mining exceeds 35 ft (11 m) at Boling and Orchard Domes. Aerial photography from 1941 to 1979 documents continuous enlargement of one subsidence feature at Orchard Dome at the lateral rate of approximately 3 acres/year (12,000 m2).

The Ogallala aquifer, which underlies the Southern High Plains, consists of the saturated sediments of the Neogene Ogallala Formation. The aquifer is the main source of water for the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico and is being severely depleted by extensive pumpage for irrigation. Contamination from evaporating saline lakes, agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, and oil field brines is locally affecting the chemical composition of Ogallala ground water.

More than 350 well logs and core and production data were used to geologically characterize oil reservoirs of the Driver waterflood unit of the Spraberry Trend in the Midland Basin, West Texas, and to assess the relationship between reservoir stratigraphy and oil recovery.