Eons before the first wildcatters smelled oil in West Texas, massive slabs of eroded sediment had fused and folded into thick bands underground, trapping the primordial sludge in layers of earth too deep to reach until modern-day engineers discovered a way. The technological breakthroughs of the past half-decade have made the plains near Odessa and Midland — long considered past their prime — some of the most coveted land in the nation. Pioneer Natural Resources, an Irving, Texas-based independent producer that has been active in the region for decades, estimates that two key Permian Basin plays hold 75 billion barrels of oil in stacked stone wedges. “We have six Bakkens sitting on top of each other,” Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield said recently, referring to North Dakota’s prolific Bakken Shale. But the same North American oil patches that have lifted Pioneer and other independent oil producers to an unprecedented status […]