Publications

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is in the final phase of the most recent assessment of the undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastal plain and state waters. Ongoing geologic, geochemical, and petrophysical framework studies have defined the total petroleum systems and assessment units (AUs) in the Gulf Coast region. Current studies...

Judge Digby Field in Pointe Coupe Parish, Louisiana, exhibits some of the highest cumulative natural gas production from the lower Tuscaloosa Formation (Upper Cretaceous) in the Gulf Coast. The average production depth in Judge Digby Field is approximately 22,000 ft. The 400°F temperatures typically encountered at depth in Judge Digby Field are anomalously low when compared to...

Energy costs in rural Alaskan communities are substantial. Diesel fuel, which must be delivered by barge or plane, is used for local power generation in most off-grid communities. In addition to high costs incurred for the purchase and transport of the fuel, the transport, transfer, and storage of fuel products pose significant difficulties in logistically challenging and environmentally...

CoalVal is a menu-driven Windows program that produces cost-of-mining analyses of mine-modeled coal resources. Geological modeling of the coal beds and some degree of mine planning, from basic prefeasibility to advanced, must already have been performed before this program can be used. United States Geological Survey mine planning is done from a very basic, prefeasibility standpoint, but...

The Fry Canyon uranium/copper project site in San Juan County, southeastern Utah, was affected by the historical (1957–68) processing of uranium and copper-uranium ores. Relict uranium tailings and related ponds, and a large copper heap-leach pile at the site represent point sources of uranium and copper to local soils, surface water, and groundwater. This study was designed to establish...

This report presents an in-place assessment of the oil shale and nahcolite resources of the Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado. The Piceance Basin is one of three large structural and sedimentary basins that contain vast amounts of oil shale resources in the Green River Formation of Eocene age. The other two basins, the Uinta Basin of eastern Utah and...

This report contains a simplified provisional correlation chart that was compiled from both published and unpublished data in order to fill a need to visualize the currently accepted stratigraphic relations between Appalachian basin formations, coal beds and coal zones, and key stratigraphic units in the northern, central, and southern Appalachian basin coal regions of Alabama, Tennessee...

In assessing continuous oil and gas resources, such as shale gas, it is important to describe not only the ultimately producible volumes, but also the expected well performance. This description is critical to any cost analysis or production scheduling. A probabilistic approach facilitates (1) the inclusion of variability in well performance within a continuous accumulation, and (2) the...

Reserve growth (growth-to-known) is the addition of oil and gas quantities to reported proved or proved-plus-probable reserves in discovered fields. The amount of reserve growth fluctuates through time with prevailing economic and technological conditions. Most reserve additions are the result of investment in field operations and in development technology. These investments can be...

Shale-gas well productivity estimates in USGS assessments from 1995 to present are based on studies that require decline curve fits and analysis to a large sample or to all wells within a particular assessment unit. Probabilistic type curves can be created on nearly any size well group and were designed for use within a resource context. The probabilistic type curve was designed to...

Accurate S-wave velocities for shallow sediments are important in performing a reliable elastic inversion for gas hydrate-bearing sediments and in evaluating velocity models for predicting S-wave velocities, but few S-wave velocities are measured at low effective pressure. Predicting S-wave velocities by using conventional methods based on the Biot-Gassmann theory appears to be...

Using a geologic-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated an in-place oil shale resource of 1.07 trillion barrels under Federal mineral rights, or 70 percent of the total oil shale in place, in the Piceance Basin, Colorado. More than 67 percent of the total oil shale in-place resource, or 1.027 trillion barrels, is under Federal surface management.