The San Andres evaporitic sequence in the Palo Duro Basin comprises several thick carbonate units in its lower part and many thin units in its upperpart. To the south, across the Northern Shelf of the Midland Basin, evaporites pinch out and carbonates predominate.

The Palo Duro Basin seemingly has all the elements necessary for hydrocarbon generation and accumulation: reservoirs, traps, source rocks, and sufficient thermal maturity. Porous facies in pre-Pennsylvanian, Pennsylvanian, and Permian strata are potential hydrocarbon reservoirs.

Geologic characterization of evaporite deposits as potential host rocks for burial of radioactive waste must include hydrogeologic investigations at both local and regional scales.

Numerous salt-emission areas exist within the Permian outcrop in the Rolling Plains of Texas and southwestern Oklahoma. Sodium chloride waters underlie the area at relatively shallow depths, discharge from salt springs and salt seeps, and greatly impair the quality of ground and surface waters.

The San Andres Formation in the Palo Duro Basin is a middle Permian carbonate-evaporite sequence situated between two red-bed units, the underlying Glorieta and the overlying undifferentiated Queen-Grayburg sequences.

A conceptual hydrogeologic model of the Palo Duro Basin, Texas Panhandle, subdivides the basin into three hydrogeologic units: (1) the shallow Ogallala and Dockum aquifers (Upper aquifer), (2) the Permian evaporite aquitard (Evaporite aquitard), and (3) the deep, confined, underpressured, princip

In the Palo Duro Basin, the Wolfcampian Series (lower Permian) overlies Pennsylvanian (primarily Virgilian) strata and underlies the Wichita Group (Leonardian).

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.

The interaction of geomorphic and ground-water processes has produced the Caprock Escarpmentthat bounds the eastern margin of the Southern High Plains in the Texas Panhandle.

The Palo Duro Basin is a broad structural low in the southern Texas Panhandle that formed as a result of nearly continuous Pennsylvanian and Permian subsidence. True complexity of this basin is unknown because of the sparsity of structural information.