Standard Minerals, Inc.
Standard Minerals is a wholly-owned subsidiary of FIMA, Inc., an emerging land development company incorporating resource exploration and mining, oil and gas exploration and extraction, and commercial and luxury residential real estate development in Central and South America. Standard Minerals currently holds 24 individual oil and gas leases in highly productive region of southeast New Mexico, adjacent to the Permian Basin.
The Permian Basin is located in West Texas and the adjoining area of southeastern New Mexico. It underlies an area approximately 250 miles wide and 300 miles long. Historically a black-oil region, the Permian Basin has turned increasingly to natural gas over the past decade. Recent data show about a third of drilling activity directed to natural gas. Some gas is associated with oil, but drilling directed to exclusively deep gas or gas in tight sands has been active for some time, and unconventional gas in the Barnett and Woodford shale formations is now attracting significant interest. Today, the Permian Basin produces 16.4 percent of the nation’s oil and 7.1 percent of its natural gas (Source: Southwest Economy). Between 4,000 to 5,000 oil and gas fields have been discovered in the Permian Basin. From the 1920’s into the 1980’s 5% of the world’s oil and gas production was from the Permian Basin (Source: KFUPM).
New Mexico has long been a highly productive region for oil and gas. For instance, in 2007, the state produced 1,525,078,162 Mcf of natural gas, and 58,972,733 barrels of oil (Source: New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department). At a commercial price of $11.37/Mcf for natural gas (the most recent price listed by the Energy Information Administration), this level of production of natural gas translates to $17,340,138,702 of natural gas. And with crude oil prices above $130/bbl, the 2007 production levels of New Mexico equate to a market value of approximately $7,853,398,853.