The State-owned submerged lands of Texas encompass almost 6,000 mi2 (15,540 km2). They lie below waters of the bay-estuary-lagoon system and the Gulf of Mexico and extend 10.3 mi (16.6 km) seaward from the Gulf shoreline (fig. 1).

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.

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.

Cretaceous rocks in the Southern High Plains, traditionally considered to be part of the High Plains aquifer and recharged by the overlying Ogallala aquifer, actually contain three aquifers with different recharge sources.

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.

The manner in which sedimentary overburden accumulates significantly influences the growth of syndepositional salt structures.

Middle-upper Miocene depositional sequences of offshore Texas represent the last regionally significant influx of terrigenous elastic sediments into the western Gulf Coast Basin.

In the Rio Grande Embayment of South Texas, the Carrizo Formation (lower Eocene) consists of two sand-rich fluvial depositional systems that grade basinward into several deltaic complexes within the upper part of the Wilcox Group.

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.

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.