Pelahatchie Field is located in central Mississippi, 20 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi. The Field was discovered in 1962 by an American company with production from the Mooringsport sand at 9,800’. Production was eventually established in fourteen additional Lower Cretaceous zones to 11,300’. Questionable drilling and production techniques by several independent operators combined with a lack of salt water disposal facilities, low oil prices and competing lease positions resulted in moderate production in the 1960s in the Cretaceous zones. In more recent years, operators have gone back into the Field and re-established production in many bypassed zones accumulating another 1,000,000 barrels of oil in these relatively shallow pay zones. This new drilling has extended the known limits of the productive area both to the north and south.  Available data now indicates that the field covers approximately 5,000 acres of productive area and is over one mile wide and 2 miles long.

In a report dated March 1996, Harold Karges, the geologist who spent much of his career studying and participating in the development of Pelahatchie Field, estimated that there were almost 3,000,000 barrels of oil yet to be recovered in the shallow Lower Cretaceous zones. However, since that time with the new drilling having expanded the field limits, we now believe 5,000,000 barrels is a more valid estimate of oil reserves to be ultimately recovered from the Lower Cretaceous. Karges noted that 44 zones in the interval between 5,000’ and 12,800’ have had oil or gas shows or have had established production in the field. Many of the previously unsubstantiated potentially productive zones have not yet been tested.