Publications

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...

This report describes a probabilistic assessment methodology developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for evaluation of the resource potential for storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the subsurface of the United States as authorized by the Energy Independence and Security Act (Public Law 110-140, 2007). The methodology is based on USGS assessment methodologies for oil and gas...

During most of middle Eocene time, a 1,500-mi2 area between the Colorado and White Rivers in northwestern Colorado was occupied by the Piceance lobe of Lake Uinta. This initially freshwater lake became increasingly saline throughout its history. Sediments accumulating in the lake produced mostly clay shale, limestone, and dolomite containing varying concentrations of organic matter. At...

No abstract available.

For the San Joaquin Basin Province in California (fig. 8.1), six petroleum systems were identified, mapped, and described to provide the basis for the five total petroleum systems (TPS) and ten related assessment units (AU) used in the 2003 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Oil and Gas Assessment (table 8.1; Gautier and others, 2004; Hosford Scheirer, 2007). The petroleum pools in...

The Orinoco Oil Belt Assessment Unit of the La Luna-Quercual Total Petroleum System encompasses approximately 50,000 km2 of the East Venezuela Basin Province that is underlain by more than 1 trillion barrels of heavy oil-in-place. As part of a program directed at estimating the technically recoverable oil and gas resources of priority petroleum basins worldwide, the U.S. Geological...

As part of a multidisciplinary investigation of Mancos Shale landscapes in the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area in Delta and Montrose Counties of western Colorado by the U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, and Bureau of Reclamation, a core of the Upper Cretaceous Mancos Shale was obtained from a borehole, USGS CL-1, in NE1/4 sec. 8, T. 50 N., R. 9 W....

No abstract available.

Pore-throat sizes in silidclastic rocks form a continuum from the submillimeter to the nanometer scale. That continuum is documented in this article using previously published data on the pore and pore-throat sizes of conventional reservoir rocks, tight-gas sandstones, and shales. For measures of central tendency (mean, mode, median), pore-throat sizes (diameters) are generally greater...

Elastic velocities and hydraulic permeability of gas hydrate-bearing sediments strongly depend on how gas hydrate accumulates in pore spaces and various gas hydrate accumulation models are proposed to predict physical property changes due to gas hydrate concentrations. Elastic velocities and permeability predicted from a cementation model differ noticeably from those from a pore-filling...

Elastic velocities of water-saturated sandstones depend primarily on porosity, effective pressure, and the degree of consolidation. If the dry-frame moduli are known, from either measurements or theoretical calculations, the effect of pore water on velocities can be modeled using the Gassmann theory. Kuster and Toksoz developed a theory based on wave-scattering theory for a variety of...

Gas-hydrate resource assessment on the Alaska North Slope using 3-D and 2-D seismic data involved six important steps: (1) determining the top and base of the gas-hydrate stability zone, (2) 'tying' well log information to seismic data through synthetic seismograms, (3) differentiating ice from gas hydrate in the permafrost interval, (4) developing an acoustic model for the reservoir and...