Publications

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean resources of 290 milllion barrels of shale oil and 7.9 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the Ordovician Collingwood-Utica Shale Total Petroleum System of the Michigan Basin Province.

The lower Eagle Ford Group (LEFG) is one of the most productive continuous hydrocarbon plays in the United States but few associated produced waters data and minimal interpretation have been published. This effort focuses on results from compositional and isotopic data from 39 produced water samples collected from horizontal wells producing from the LEFG in south central Texas. The depth of the LE

This report presents a novel conceptual framework and approach for conducting a geologically based environmental assessment, or geoenvironmental assessment, of undiscovered uranium resources within an area likely to contain uranium deposits. The framework is based on a source-to-receptor model that prioritizes the most likely contaminant sources, contaminant pathways, and affected environmental me

This paper outlines the development and demonstration of a new tool, TOUGH2–ChemPlugin (T2CPI) for predicting rock–water–CO2 interaction following injection of supercritical CO2 into a heterogeneous carbonate system. Specifically, modeling capabilities of TOUGH2, which examines multiphase flow and supercritical CO2 behavior, were combined with the geochemical modeling capabilities of The Geochemis

Microscopic solid bitumen is a petrographically defined secondary organic matter residue produced during petroleum generation and subsequent oil transformation. The presence of solid bitumen impacts many reservoir properties including porosity, permeability, and hydrocarbon generation and storage, among others. Furthermore, solid bitumen reflectance is an important parameter for assessing the ther

Thermal maturity is critical to evaluate petroleum systems and to interpret biomarker results for paleoenvironmental and geobiology studies. Many thermal maturity indices were developed for marine source rocks containing type II kerogen, but their behavior in organic sulfur-rich source rocks requires more investigation. Here, we present geochemical analyses of whole and extracted rock, isolated ke

Recently reported detrital zircon (DZ) data help to associate the Paleogene strata of the Gulf of Mexico region to various provenance areas. By far, recent work has emphasised upper Paleocene-lower Eocene and upper Oligocene strata that were deposited during the two episodes of the highest sediment supply in the Paleogene. The data reveal a dynamic drainage history, including (1) initial routing o

Studies of naturally occurring subsurface carbon dioxide (CO2) accumulations can provide useful information for potential CO2 injection projects; however, the microbial communities and formation water geochemistry of most reservoirs are understudied. Formation water and microbial biomass were sampled at four CO2-rich reservoir sites: two within Bravo Dome, a commercial CO2 field in New Mexico; one

Sections of the Upper Cretaceous (Coniacian to Campanian) Niobrara Formation in two cores from Kansas and Colorado, the Amoco Rebecca Bounds and USGS Portland 1, respectively, were examined by hyperspectral core imaging and analysis. A spectral imaging system combining high-resolution photography (50 μm), 3D laser profiling (20 μm), and near-visible + short-wave infrared reflectance spectroscopy (

Coalbed methane (CBM) has emerged as a clean energy resource in the global energy mix, especially in countries such as Australia, China, India and the USA. The economical and successful development of CBM requires a thorough evaluation and optimization of well placement prior to field-scale exploitation. This paper presents a two-stage, step-wise optimization framework to obtain the optimal placem

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean resources of 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 561 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Lower Silurian Shale Total Petroleum System of the Arabian Peninsula.

For sample mounting, organic petrology laboratories typically use cold-setting epoxy-resin (e.g., 40 °C, used by Oklahoma Geological Survey, OGS) or heat-setting thermoplastic (e.g., 180 °C, used by U.S. Geological Survey, USGS). Previous workers have suggested a systematic huminite/vitrinite reflectance (VRo) increase was associated with the thermoplastic preparation process, relative to epoxy mo