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.

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.

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 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.