Welcome to the UTPB Geology Web Site!

The University of Texas of the Permian Basin is located in Odessa, Texas, about half-way between El Paso and Fort Worth. This is the heart of the famous geologic province known as the Permian Basin, a classic and world-class sedimentary and petroleum basin.

An understanding of geology helps students appreciate the world around them, gives perspective to the length and events of earth history, and provides the knowledge to help them make informed decisions about social, economic, and environmental issues, such as energy supplies, global warming, and geologic hazards.

The UTPB geology curriculum gives students a strong undergraduate foundation for more specialized training at the graduate level or for on-the-job training in industry or government agencies. Our graduate program enjoys a respected reputation for preparing geologists for career positions in a diversity of earth-science industries, or for continuing studies at a higher level.

If your interests as a student include sedimentology, stratigraphy, paleontology, structural geology, geophysics, igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary petrology, basin evolution, or petroleum geology,
you should check out all the things that UTPB has to offer.

Geologists come from all over the world to study some of the finest outcrops of reef and reef-related rocks in the world as exposed in the Guadalupe Mountains of west Texas and southeast New Mexico (above).

However, most of the landscape of West Texas (flat, flat, flat!) masks the exciting geology that lies beneath. The challenge of deciphering the complex relationships between basins, uplifts, faulting, and depositional patterns is illustrated by the subsurface structure map of the Permian Basin to the left. The cross section below gives a simplified view of the basin's profile from west to east.

The Permian Basin is one of the most prolific petroleum provinces in North America, and accounts for about 21% of current US oil and gas production. The data from tens of thousands of wells provide fertile areas for research. And, because of the oil and gas activity, a large and vibrant professional geological community exists in nearby Midland.

To learn more about the geology of the Permian Basin, click on either the map or the cross section.

  Map courtesy of Geological Data Services