Crude quality varies across West Texas’ Permian Basin, but the variation is particularly noticeable in the western areas of that mature oil field where production is fast ramping up, a top manager for ConocoPhillips said Thursday. The 4,500 feet of potentially productive “stacked,” or layered, pay zones that underlies that basin is showing some “very significant variation” in the quality of crude oil, particularly in the Delaware sub-basin in the far-western Permian, said Matt Fox, ConocoPhillips’ executive vice president for exploration and production. “In some places it’s gas with a high liquids yields; in some areas it’s relatively low API [gravity] oil,” Fox said during a quarterly company earnings conference call.. As industry’s understanding of the basin develops, “it will affect implications for what sort of offtake and infrastructure requirements are required to fully evacuate all these products from the area.” Article continues below… […]