Publications

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 20.8 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas and a mean of 0.60 billion barrels of undiscovered natural gas liquids in the Western Gulf Province of the Gulf Coast Region, Louisiana and Texas.

The Hamra Basin Province encompasses approximately 244,100 square kilometers (94,250 square miles) and is entirely within Libya. One composite total petroleum system (TPS) was defined for this assessment; it extends from Libya westward into adjacent parts of Algeria and southern Tunisia. The Hamra Basin part of the TPS was subdivided into four assessment units for the purpose of resource assessmen

Sustained increases in energy prices have focused attention on gas resources in low permeability shale or in coals that were previously considered economically marginal. Daily well deliverability is often relatively small, although the estimates of the total volumes of recoverable resources in these settings are large. Planning and development decisions for extraction of such resources must be are

Tertiary (3.78 Ma to 3.65 Ma) biotite-K-feldspar porphyritic bodies intrude Tertiary, poorly consolidated lacustrine sedimentary rocks in the Beiya mineral district in southwestern China. The intrusives are characterized by a microcrystalline and vitreous-cryptocrystalline groundmass, by replacement of some tabular K-feldspar phenocrysts with microcrystalline chlorite and calcite, and by Fe-rich r

Cenomanian to Campanian rocks of north-central Montana contain shallow economic accumulations of dry natural gas derived from microbial methanogenesis. The methanogens utilized carbon dioxide derived from organic matter in the marginal marine sediments and hydrogen from in situ pore water to generate methane. The most recent USGS assessment of the shallow gas resources of eastern Montana used a pe

No abstract available.

Yucca Mountain in southwestern Nevada is a prominent, irregularly shaped upland formed by a thick apron of Miocene pyroclastic-flow and fallout tephra deposits, with minor lava flows, that was segmented by through-going, large-displacement normal faults into a series of north-trending, eastwardly tilted structural blocks. The principal volcanic-rock units are the Tiva Canyon and Topopah Spring Tuf

Siliciclastic and calcareous sedimentary rocks of early Late Cretaceous age in the Western Interior of the United States have been assigned to, in ascending order, the Graneros Shale, Greenhorn Formation, Carlile Shale, Niobrara Formation, and their lateral equivalents (including members of the Frontier Formation and overlying formations). This sequence of formations was deposited intermittently w

We interpret Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements in the northwestern United States and adjacent parts of western Canada to describe relative motions of crustal blocks, locking on faults and permanent deformation associated with convergence between the Juan de Fuca and North American plates. To estimate angular velocities of the oceanic Juan de Fuca and Explorer plates and several continen

No abstract available.

This report presents a review of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 2007 assessment of the undiscovered oil and gas resources in Paleogene strata underlying the U.S. Gulf of Mexico Coastal Plain and state waters. Geochemical, geologic, geophysical, thermal maturation, burial history, and paleontologic studies have been combined with regional cross sections and data from previous USGS petroleum asse

The growth in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has highlighted the need for regional and national digital geologic maps attributed with age and rock type information. Such spatial data can be conveniently used to generate derivative maps for purposes that include mineral-resource assessment, metallogenic studies, tectonic studies, human health and environmental research.In 1997, the