1. Kansas Oil and Gas Activity in the Mississippian Lime Play
The Kansas Department of Commerce and several other state agencies are examining the potential
economic development benefits and challenges of supporting oil and gas activity in the Mississippian Lime
Play (MLP) and to ensure the state is prepared for all the related activity in the region.
The potential economic benefits to Kansas could be significant, resulting in hundreds of wells drilled,
billions of dollars in investment, thousands of jobs and industry activity in the MLP for the next 20 to 30
years.
The MLP is a porous limestone formation that encompasses areas of northern Oklahoma, and southern and
western Kansas. The region was considered tapped out by vertical drilling decades ago, but a technique
known as hydraulic fracturing (also called fracing or fracking) in combination with horizontal drilling has
the potential to significantly revive oil and gas activity in the region.