Publications

Among the greatest uncertainties in future energy supply and a subject of considerable environmental concern is the amount of oil and gas yet to be found in the Arctic. By using a probabilistic geology-based methodology, the United States Geological Survey has assessed the area north of the Arctic Circle and concluded that about 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13% of the world’s undiscover

During the Indian National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 01 (NGHP-01), one of the richest marine gas hydrate accumulations was discovered at drill site NGHP-01-10 in the Krishna-Godavari Basin, offshore of southeast India. The occurrence of concentrated gas hydrate at this site is primarily controlled by the presence of fractures. Gas hydrate saturations estimated from P- and S-wave velocities, a

This talk was presented by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geologist Susan Hall on May 11, 2009, at the Uranium 2009 conference in Keystone, Colorado, and on May 12, 2009, as part of an underground injection control track presentation at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Environmental Trade Fair and Conference in Austin, Texas. Texas has been the location of the greatest numbe

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has completed the National Coal Resource Assessment (NCRA), a multiyear project by the USGS Energy Resources Program, in partnership with State geological surveys in the coal producing regions of the United States. The NCRA is the first digital national coal-resource assessment. Coal beds and zones were assessed in five regions that account for more than 90 percen

Acoustic measurements made using compressional-wave (P-wave) and shear-wave (S-wave) transducers in aluminum cylinders reveal waveform features with high amplitudes and with velocities that depend on the feature's dominant frequency. In a given waveform, high-frequency features generally arrive earlier than low-frequency features, typical for normal mode propagation. To analyze these waveforms, th

Gas, oil, and water production data were collected from the Fuller Reservoir, Cooper Reservoir, Frenchie Draw, Cave Gulch, and Madden fields in the Wind River Basin, Wyoming. These fields produce from the Mississippian Madison Limestone, the Upper Cretaceous Cody Shale and Mesaverde Formation, and the Paleocene lower unnamed member and Shotgun Member of the Fort Union Formation. Diagrams of wat

The Phosphoria Sea extended at least 500 km westward and at least 700 km southwestward from its core area centered in southeastern Idaho. Throughout that extent it displayed many characteristic features of the core: the same fauna, the same unique sedimentary assemblage including phosphate in mostly pelletal form, chert composed mainly of sponge spicules, and an association with dolomite. Phosphor

Oil-shale deposits are in many parts of the world. They range in age from Cambrian to Tertiary and were formed in a variety of marine, continental, and lacustrine depositional environments. The largest known deposit is in the Green River Formation in the western United States; it contains an estimated 213 billion tons of in-situ shale oil (about 1.5 trillion U.S. barrels). Total resources of a sel

The purpose of this report is to explore current oil and gas energy development in the area encompassing the Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative. The Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative is a long-term science-based effort to ensure southwestern Wyoming's wildlife and habitat remain viable in areas facing development pressure. Wyoming encompasses some of the highest quality wildlife h

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently completed a reassessment of in-place oil shale resources, regardless of richness, in the Eocene Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin, western Colorado. A considerable amount of oil-yield data has been collected after previous in-place assessments were published, and these data were incorporated into this new assessment. About twice as many oil-yiel

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently completed an assessment of in-place nahcolite (NaHCO3) resources in the Piceance Basin, northwestern Colorado. Nahcolite is present in the oil shale deposits of the Parachute Creek Member of the Eocene Green River Formation. It occurs as disseminated aggregates, nodules, bedded units of disseminated brown crystals, and white crystalline beds associated wi

Gas, oil, and water production data were compiled from 38 wells with production commencing during the 1980s from the Wasatch Formation in the Greater Natural Buttes field, Uinta Basin, Utah. This study is one of a series of reports examining fluid production from tight gas reservoirs, which are characterized by low permeability, low porosity, and the presence of clay minerals in pore space. The ge