West Virginia holds oil, though its energy profile is commonly associated with vast reserves of coal and natural gas. Oil was historically the Mountain State’s first major petroleum resource, establishing an industry that predated many famous western oil fields. While crude oil production declined for much of the 20th century, modern drilling techniques targeting deeper formations have renewed its presence, primarily as a coproduct of the state’s dominant natural gas extraction.
West Virginia’s Oil Presence and Geological Foundation
West Virginia sits within the Appalachian Basin, a massive geological structure spanning the eastern United States that hosts hydrocarbon deposits. The oil is trapped within layers of permeable sedimentary rock capped by impermeable seals, forming conventional reservoirs. These ancient reservoirs contain oil that migrated upward from deeper source rocks over millions of years.
Historically, oil was extracted from shallow, conventional sandstone layers from the Upper Devonian and Lower Mississippian periods. The Berea Sandstone has been a productive formation for over a century, particularly in the western parts of the state. The deeper Devonian and Ordovician shales, such as the Marcellus and Utica, are the primary focus of modern exploration, holding hydrocarbons previously inaccessible using traditional vertical drilling.
The Legacy of Early Oil Production
West Virginia was a pioneer in the American oil industry, with its commercial history beginning as an outgrowth of the salt-making industry in the early 19th century. Salt-makers often encountered oil and gas while drilling for brine, initially viewing the petroleum as a nuisance that contaminated their product. Its value was eventually recognized, leading to focused drilling efforts.
The definitive moment occurred at the Burning Springs oil field in Wirt County. In 1859, the Rathbone family drilled a well that struck petroleum, just months after the famous Drake well in Pennsylvania. This site, one of only two producing oil fields in the world at the start of the Civil War, established West Virginia as a birthplace of the petroleum industry. The state’s oil production peaked in 1900, generating approximately 16 million barrels of crude oil before production began a long decline.
Oil Production in the Context of Natural Gas Dominance
Oil plays a subordinate role to its massive natural gas production in West Virginia’s modern energy sector. The state is a top-five producer of marketed natural gas in the nation, driven by the development of the Marcellus and Utica-Point Pleasant shale plays. Consequently, most current oil output is derived from wells primarily targeting gas.
Much of the reported oil volume is in the form of natural gas liquids (NGLs), often called condensates. These hydrocarbons exist as gas in the deep reservoir but condense into a liquid when brought to the surface. Wells drilled into the “wet gas” areas of the shales produce natural gas rich in these liquids, including ethane, propane, and butane, alongside a small amount of crude oil. Although West Virginia’s total crude oil and liquids production has seen a recent resurgence, generating over 20 million barrels per year in the early 2020s, it still accounts for a fraction of the nation’s total oil output.
Modern Extraction Methods and Key Producing Regions
The resurgence in oil and liquids production is directly attributable to unconventional drilling technologies. Producers routinely utilize horizontal drilling, where the wellbore turns ninety degrees to extend thousands of feet laterally through the target rock layer. This technique maximizes the contact area with the hydrocarbon-bearing rock, allowing for commercial extraction from previously uneconomic “tight” reservoirs.
Horizontal drilling is paired with hydraulic fracturing, a process that involves injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into the wellbore to create small fissures in the rock. The sand, or proppant, holds these fractures open, allowing the trapped oil and gas to flow to the well. The most active areas for this modern production are concentrated in the northern panhandle and western counties, such as Marshall, Wetzel, and Ohio, which lie over the liquids-rich portions of the Utica and Marcellus formations.