Publications

This report presents the results of a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessment of the technically recoverable undiscovered natural gas resources in Devonian shale in the Appalachian Basin Petroleum Province of the eastern United States. These results are part of the USGS assessment in 2002 of the technically recoverable undiscovered oil and gas resources of the province. This report does...

Natural gases and associated crude oils in the “Clinton” sandstone, Medina Group sandstones, and equivalent Tuscarora Sandstone in the northern Appalachian basin are part of a regional, continuous-type or basin-centered accumulation. The origin of the hydrocarbon charge to regional continuoustype accumulations is poorly understood. We have analyzed the molecular and stable isotopic...

The geochemical processes that control the distribution of hydrocarbons in the regional accumulation of natural gas and crude oil in reservoirs of Early Silurian age in the central Appalachian basin are not well understood. Gas and oil samples from 14 wells along a down-dip transect through the accumulation in northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania were analyzed for molecular...

This chapter is a re-release of U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 2994, of the same title, by Ryder and others (2008).

One of the more recent maps of Appalachian basin oil and gas fields (and the adjoining Black Warrior basin) is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) compilation by Mast and others (1998) (see Trippi and others, this volume, chap. I.1). This map is part of a larger oil and gas field map for the conterminous United States that was derived by Mast and others (1998) from the Well History Control...

The Utica-Lower Paleozoic Total Petroleum System (TPS) in the Appalachian Basin Province is named for the Upper Ordovician Utica Shale, which is the source rock, and for multiple lower Paleozoic sandstone and carbonate units that are the important reservoirs. The total organic carbon (TOC) values for the Utica Shale are usually greater than 1 weight percent. TOC values ranging from 2 to...

This chapter is a re-release of U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 2916, of the same title, by Ryder (2006).

The recent development of unconventional oil and natural gas resources in the United States builds upon many decades of research, which included resource assessment and the development of well completion and extraction technology. The Eastern Gas Shales Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1980s, investigated the gas potential of organic-rich, Devonian black shales in...

The most recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Appalachian basin was completed in 2002 (Milici and others, 2003). This assessment was based on the total petroleum system (TPS), a concept introduced by Magoon and Dow (1994) and developed during subsequent studies such as those by the U.S. Geological Survey World Energy Assessment Team...

The Appalachian basin is a mature basin containing abundant oil, gas, and coal resources. Its fossil-fuel-bearing strata range in age from Cambrian to Permian and extend over the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The basin has provided abundant fossil fuels to support the Nation’s economic growth for at...

No abstract available.

Data from 157 counties in the Appalachian basin of average sulfur content of coal mined for electrical power generation from 1983 through 2005 show a general decrease in the number of counties where coal mining has occurred and a decrease in the number of counties where higher sulfur coals (>2 percent sulfur) were mined. Calculated potential SO2 emissions (assuming no post-combustion SO2...