Coalbed methane production has been established in the Sand Wash Basin. Large coal resources, gas shows during drilling of coal beds, and high gas contents in some coals triggered initial development along the basin margins. Results to date have been disappointing. Coalbed wells have yielded little gas and large volumes of water. In the absence of a regional analysis, neither production data nor the basin's ultimate coalbed methane potential could be fully evaluated.

Extensively cored cyclic evaporites of the San Andres Formation (Guadalupian) of the Palo Duro Basin, Texas Panhandle, provided fundamental information for interpreting evaporite depositional processes. These evaporites preserve exceptionally sensitive indicators of water-level fluctuation in their depositional environment: (1) sedimentary fabrics that formed during evaporite deposition; (2) sedimentary features, surfaces, and insoluble residues that formed during evaporite dissolution; and (3) diagenetic overprints that formed during evaporite brine evolution.