Publications

Sustained crude oil price increases have led to increased investment in and production of Canadian bitumen to supplement North American oil supplies. For new projects, the evaluation of profitability is based on a prediction of the future price path of bitumen and ultimately light/medium crude oil. This article examines the relationship between the bitumen and light crude oil prices in...

The Northern Nonassociated Gas Assessment Unit (AU) of the Winters-Domengine Total Petroleum System of the San Joaquin Basin Province consists of all nonassociated gas accumulations in Cretaceous, Eocene, and Miocene sandstones located north of township 15 South in the San Joaquin Valley. The northern San Joaquin Valley forms a northwest-southeast trending asymmetrical trough. It is...

The San Joaquin Basin is a major petroleum province that forms the southern half of California’s Great Valley, a 700-km-long, asymmetrical basin that originated between a subduction zone to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east. Sedimentary fill and tectonic structures of the San Joaquin Basin record the Mesozoic through Cenozoic geologic history of North America’s western margin...

The study area of US Geological Survey Circular 1288, the world outside the US and Canada, was partitioned into 44 countries and country groups. Map figures such as Fig. 2 and graphs similar to Figs. 3 and 4 provide a visual summary of maturity of oil and gas exploration. From 1992 through 2001, exploration data show that in the study area the delineated prospective area expanded at a...

The time transgressive nature of the California benthic foraminiferal stages is in most cases the result of poor taxonomy, use of local species ranges, and a lack of understanding about the type sections. Correcting these problems allows the stages to be consistently applied and enhances their ability to identify coeval strata. Each stage is identified by the first and last appearances...

No abstract available.

The San Joaquin Basin Province is a petroliferous basin filled with predominantly Late Cretaceous to Pliocene-aged sediments, with organic-rich marine rocks of Late Cretaceous, Eocene, and Miocene age providing the source of most of the oil and gas. Previous geochemical studies have focused on the origin of the oil in the province, but the origin of the natural gas has received little...

Coalbed methane regeneration is of increasing interest, and is gaining global attention with respect to enhancement of gas recovery. The objective of this study is to determine if there are differences in methanogen nucleic acid sequences associated with low rank coals from the Powder River Basin, Wyoming, in comparison with sequences that can be recovered from coal bed-associated...

A recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) oil and gas assessment of the Powder River Basin , Wyoming and Montana, identified the Upper Cretaceous Mowry Shale and Niobrara Formation as the primary hydrocarbon sources for Cretaceous conventional and unconventional reservoirs. Cumulative Mowry-sourced petroleum production is about 1.2 BBO (billion barrels of oil) and 2.2 TCFG (trillion cubic...

Significant amounts (> 36 million m3/day) of coalbed methane (CBM) are currently being extracted from coal beds in the Paleocene Fort Union Formation of the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana. Information on processes that generate methane in these coalbed reservoirs is important for developing methods that will stimulate additional production. The chemical and isotopic...

The Lower Bakersfield Arch Assessment Unit (AU) of the Miocene Total Petroleum System (San Joaquin Basin Province) is primarily defined by the distribution of hydrocarbons generated from biosiliceous shale of the Monterey Formation and by the distribution of basinal-facies sandstones of the Stevens sand of Eckis (1940; hereafter referred to as Stevens sand). Traps are principally...

A geologic model was developed to assess undiscovered oil and gas resources in the Kemik-Thomson Play of the Central North Slope, Alaska. In this model, regional erosion during the Early Cretaceous produced an incised valley system on the flanks and crest of the Mikkelsen High and formed the Lower Cretaceous unconformity. Locally derived, coarse-grained siliciclastic and carbonate...