Since 1979, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has funded cooperative programs with coal-bearing states in an effort to provide current U.S. coal resource estimates that are calculated by uniform, computerized methods.

The Sabine Arch is a large (1 2,000 mi2 [31,000 km2]), low-amplitude anticline centered on the Texas-Louisiana border.

Surface fissures have been observed in many desert basins in the western United States. These surface-collapse features are usually discovered after a normally dry surface has been covered with water, either by runoff from intense rainfall, by flooding, or by irrigation.

In a five-county area of South Texas, geopressured-geothermal reservoirs in the Paleocene-Eocene Wilcox Group lie below medium- to heavy-oil reservoirs in the Eocene Jackson Group. This fortuitous association suggests the use of geothermal fluids for thermally enhanced oil recovery (TEOR).

Shallow-water-platform carbonate reservoirs of Permian age have accounted for more than half of the oil production in the Permian Basin, one of the largest oil-producing regions in the United States.

Water produced from oil, gas, and geothermal reservoirs contains natural radioactivity that ranges from background levels to levels found in uranium mill tailings.

Of the more than 19,000 documented leaking petroleum storage tank (LPST) sites in Texas, more than 6,000 have impacted ground water and resulted in fuel hydrocarbon (FHC) plumes.