The SCOOP and STACK: Oklahoma's Premier Oil and Gas Plays

The SCOOP and STACK are two names you will hear constantly if you research oil and gas investing, and for good reason. They are among the most productive horizontal plays in the country, and they sit inside the proven Anadarko Basin. This guide explains what the names mean, the geology underneath them, and how the play economics work.

Read on for the facts on these plays, and if you want to talk through what an opportunity looks like in practice, our team is happy to walk you through it.

What SCOOP and STACK Actually Stand For

The names sound like marketing, but they are mostly geography. SCOOP is the South Central Oklahoma Oil Province, a horizontal play that runs across south-central Oklahoma. STACK is the Sooner Trend Anadarko Canadian Kingfisher, which blends a long-producing field name (the Sooner Trend) with the basin and the counties at the play's core (Canadian and Kingfisher).

Both plays sit inside the Anadarko Basin, the deep, century-old basin that covers western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. If the Anadarko is the neighborhood, the SCOOP and STACK are two of its best blocks. They were developed in the modern horizontal era, but they tap formations that operators have understood for generations.

The SCOOP: A Woodford-Driven Oil Province

The SCOOP is built on the Woodford Shale, one of the most prolific source-and-reservoir rocks in the Midcontinent. In the core of the play, the Woodford sits roughly 9,000 to 14,000 feet down and is thick enough to support long horizontal laterals. That thickness is part of why the play works: a longer lateral through good rock contacts more reservoir, which improves the economics of each well.

The SCOOP covers portions of Grady, Stephens, Garvin, McClain, and Carter counties. Different parts of the play sit in different windows, from oil-weighted in some areas to liquids-rich and gas elsewhere, which gives operators room to target the product mix that prices favor at the time. Operators across the play have reported estimated ultimate recoveries ranging from a few hundred thousand to over a million barrels of oil equivalent per well, depending on the zone, the lateral length, and the completion design.

Because the Woodford has such a long production history, operators can lean on real offset results across the play, which is part of why a SCOOP lateral is more of a known quantity than a guess.

The STACK: A Lesson in Stacked Pay

If the SCOOP is about one great formation, the STACK is about several at once. It is a multi-zone play producing from the Meramec, Osage, and Woodford across Blaine, Canadian, and Kingfisher counties. The defining feature is right there in the name: the pay is stacked.

The Meramec alone holds multiple benches, each with its own reservoir character, and the Osage and Woodford add more intervals beneath it. Because these productive zones sit directly on top of each other, an operator can drill several wells per spacing unit from a single pad, each one targeting a different layer. That is stacked-lateral development, and it is the reason the STACK gets so much attention. One lease can hold a whole program of wells rather than a single shot.

For an investor, the practical takeaway is that STACK acreage tends to support development over time. A strong position is not used up by one well. It is the foundation for a sequence of them as conditions allow.

Why the SCOOP and STACK Work for Investors

Set the geology against the things that actually decide whether a well makes money, and the appeal of these plays gets concrete:

• Stacked pay and optionality : Multiple formations on the same acreage, in oil, liquids, and gas windows, give an operator flexibility as commodity prices move.
• Lower entry costs than the Permian : Quality acreage in the SCOOP and STACK has historically been meaningfully cheaper per acre than comparable Permian ground. More of the capital goes into the wellbore and less into the land.
• Competitive breakeven economics : Well-positioned SCOOP and STACK wells have broken even in the range of the mid-thirties to mid-forties per barrel at the play level. Lower breakevens leave more cushion when prices fall.
• Built-out infrastructure : Pipelines and gas processing across the SCOOP and STACK have been developed aggressively, and Cushing, the national pricing hub, is in the same state. Takeaway is rarely the constraint here that it has been in some other basins.
• Decades of data : These plays draw on formations with long production histories, so an operator can lean on real offset results rather than projections.

The breakeven and recovery figures above are play-level industry observations, not a promise about any particular well. Oil and gas investing carries real risk, results vary well to well, and prices move. What the SCOOP and STACK offer is a proven, data-rich place to take that risk. For the bigger picture on how the basin fits the continent, see our guide to North American oil basins, and for how investing works in practice, our complete guide to investing in oil and gas.

SCOOP and STACK: Common Questions

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