Publications

Exploration for tight oil in the frontier Santanghu Basin of northwest China has resulted in recent commercial discoveries sourced from the lacustrine Upper Permian Lucaogou Formation, already considered a “world class source rock” in the Junggar Basin to the west. Here we apply an integrated analytical program to carbonate-dominated mudrocks from the Lucaogou Formation in Santanghu...

The recent interest in exploration for shale gas increases the demand for a reliable, compatible resource assessment. Many different assessment methods are used, commonly depending on types and quantity of data available, which may lead to significantly divergent results for the same shale-gas play. This study compares results obtained using performance-based and gas-in-place...

Organic petrography via incident light microscopy has broad application to shale petroleum systems, including delineation of thermal maturity windows and determination of organo-facies. Incident light microscopy allows practitioners the ability to identify various types of organic components and demonstrates that solid bitumen is the dominant organic matter occurring in shale plays of...

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has dramatically increased from the start of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s to present levels exceeding 400 ppm. Carbon dioxide derived from fossil fuel combustion is a greenhouse gas and a major contributor to on-going climate change. Carbon and oxygen stable isotope geochemistry is a useful tool to help model and...

Scientific Investigations Report 2016–5089 and accompanying data releases are the products of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Sagebrush Mineral-Resource Assessment (SaMiRA). The assessment was done at the request of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to evaluate the mineral-resource potential of some 10 million acres of Federal and adjacent lands in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon...

This report, chapter A of Scientific Investigations Report 2016–5089, provides an overview of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Sagebrush Mineral-Resource Assessment (SaMiRA). The report also describes the methods, procedures, and voluminous fundamental reference information used throughout the assessment. Data from several major publicly available databases and other published sources...

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations are fueling anthropogenic climate change. Geologic sequestration of anthropogenic CO2 in depleted oil reservoirs is one option for reducing CO2 emissions to the atmosphere while enhancing oil recovery. In order to evaluate the feasibility of using enhanced oil recovery (EOR) sites in the United States for permanent CO2 storage, an...

This paper demonstrates geospatial modification of the USGS methodology for assessing geologic CO2 storage resources, and was applied to the Pre-Punta Gorda Composite and Dollar Bay reservoirs of the South Florida Basin. The study provides detailed evaluation of porous intervals within these reservoirs and utilizes GIS to evaluate the potential spatial distribution of reservoir...

As part of the first-ever U.S. Geological Survey global assessment of undiscovered copper resources, data common to several regional spatial databases published by the U.S. Geological Survey, including one report from Finland and one from Greenland, were standardized, updated, and compiled into a global copper resource database. This integrated collection of spatial databases provides...

Alaska is a major producer of base and precious metals and has a high potential for additional undiscovered mineral resources. However, discovery is hindered by Alaska’s vast size, remoteness, and rugged terrain. New methods are needed to overcome these obstacles in order to fully evaluate Alaska’s geology and mineral resource potential. Hyperspectral surveying is one method that can be...

Following its middle Miocene inception, numerous basins of varying lengths and depths developed along the Dead Sea fault zone, a large continental transform plate boundary. The modern day left-lateral fault zone has an accumulated left-lateral offset of 105 to 110 km (65 to 68 mi). The deepest basin along the fault zone, the Lake Lisan or Dead Sea basin, reaches depths of 7.5 to 8.5 km...

The Hartford-Deerfield basin, a Late Triassic to Early Jurassic rift basin located in central Connecticut and Massachusetts, is the northernmost basin of the onshore Mesozoic rift basins in the eastern United States. The presence of asphaltic petroleum in outcrops indicates that at least one active petroleum system has existed within the basin. However, to-date oil and gas wells have not...