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Geology topics

Mark A. Kirschbaum

Publications and source records attributed to Mark A. Kirschbaum.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2019

Lithologic descriptions, geophysical logs, and source-rock geochemistry of the U.S. Geological Survey Alcova Reservoir AR–1–13 Core Hole, Natrona County, Wyoming

In 2013, a continuous 624-foot core hole was drilled and logged by the U.S. Geological Survey in Natrona County, Wyoming, with the goal to better understand Cretaceous source rocks in the Wind River Basin. The core hole, named the Alcova Reservoir AR–1–13, penetrated the interval extending from the upper part of the Lower Cretaceous Cloverly Formation to the lower part of the Upper Cretaceous Frontier Formation. The lithologies are predominantly mudrock, with minor amounts of sandstone and altered volcanic ash beds that were deposited in open marine, nearshore marine, and fluvial settings. Samples were collected from open marine clay-rich, dark-colored mudrocks, and these were analyzed for total organic carbon content and by programmed pyrolysis analysis. The results show that the lower part of the Frontier Formation, Shell Creek Shale equivalent, and the Thermopolis Shale contain Type III gas-prone kerogen, with poor to fair generative source rock potential. The upper part of the Mowry Shale has good to excellent generative potential, with organic matter composed mainly of Type II oil-prone kerogen with some mixed Type II/III kerogen capable of generating oil and gas.

Wyoming↗
USGS2013

Controls on the deposition and preservation of the Cretaceous Mowry Shale and Frontier Formation and equivalents, Rocky Mountain region, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming

Regional variations in thickness and facies of clastic sediments are controlled by geographic location within a foreland basin. Preservation of facies is dependent on the original accommodation space available during deposition and ultimately by tectonic modification of the foreland in its postthrusting stages. The preservation of facies within the foreland basin and during the modification stage affects the kinds of hydrocarbon reservoirs that are present. This is the case for the Cretaceous Mowry Shale and Frontier Formation and equivalent strata in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Biostratigraphically constrained isopach maps of three intervals within these formations provide a control on eustatic variations in sea level, which allow depositional patterns across dip and along strike to be interpreted in terms of relationship to thrust progression and depositional topography. The most highly subsiding parts of the Rocky Mountain foreland basin, near the fold and thrust belt to the west, typically contain a low number of coarse-grained sandstone channels but limited sandstone reservoirs. However, where subsidence is greater than sediment supply, the foredeep contains stacked deltaic sandstones, coal, and preserved transgressive marine shales in mainly conformable successions. The main exploration play in this area is currently coalbed gas, but the enhanced coal thickness combined with a Mowry marine shale source rock indicates that a low-permeability, basin-centered play may exist somewhere along strike in a deep part of the basin. In the slower subsiding parts of the foreland basin, marginal marine and fluvial sandstones are amalgamated and compartmentalized by unconformities, providing conditions for the development of stratigraphic and combination traps, especially in areas of repeated reactivation. Areas of medium accommodation in the most distal parts of the foreland contain isolated marginal marine shoreface and deltaic sandstones that were deposited at or near sea level lowstand and were reworked landward by ravinement and longshore currents by storms creating stratigraphic or combination traps enclosed with marine shale seals. Paleogeographic reconstructions are used to show exploration fairways of the different play types present in the Laramide-modified, Cretaceous foreland basin. Existing oil and gas fields from these plays show a relatively consistent volume of hydrocarbons, which results from the partitioning of facies within the different parts of the foreland basin.

Colorado;Utah;Wyoming↗
USGS2012

Assessment of undiscovered conventional oil and gas resources of Bonaparte Basin, Browse Basin, Northwest Shelf, and Gippsland Basin Provinces, Australia, 2011

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated means of 4.7 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 227 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas in three major offshore petroleum basins of northwest Australia and in the Gippsland Basin of southeast Australia.

Bonaparte Basin;Browse Basin;Northwest Shelf;Gipps↗
USGS2012

Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the East Coast Mesozoic basins of the Piedmont, Blue Ridge Thrust Belt, Atlantic Coastal Plain, and New England Provinces, 2011

During the early opening of the Atlantic Ocean in the Mesozoic Era, numerous extensional basins formed along the eastern margin of the North American continent from Florida northward to New England and parts of adjacent Canada. The basins extend generally from the offshore Atlantic continental margin westward beneath the Atlantic Coastal Plain to the Appalachian Mountains. Using a geology-based assessment method, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean undiscovered natural gas resource of 3,860 billion cubic feet and a mean undiscovered natural gas liquids resource of 135 million barrels in continuous accumulations within five of the East Coast Mesozoic basins: the Deep River, Dan River-Danville, and Richmond basins, which are within the Piedmont Province of North Carolina and Virginia; the Taylorsville basin, which is almost entirely within the Atlantic Coastal Plain Province of Virginia and Maryland; and the southern part of the Newark basin (herein referred to as the South Newark basin), which is within the Blue Ridge Thrust Belt Province of New Jersey. The provinces, which contain these extensional basins, extend across parts of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

East Coast Mesozoic Basins↗
USGS2012

Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Ordovician Utica Shale of the Appalachian Basin Province, 2012

The U.S. Geological Survey assessed unconventional oil and gas resources of the Upper Ordovician Utica Shale and adjacent units in the Appalachian Basin Province. The assessment covers parts of Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. The geologic concept is that black shale of the Utica Shale and adjacent units generated hydrocarbons from Type II organic material in areas that are thermally mature for oil and gas. The source rocks generated petroleum that migrated into adjacent units, but also retained significant hydrocarbons within the matrix and adsorbed to organic matter of the shale. These are potentially technically recoverable resources that can be exploited by using horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing techniques.

Maryl;New York;Ohio;Pennsylvania;Virginia;West Vir↗
USGS2012

Stratigraphic cross section of measured sections and drill holes of the Neslen Formation and adjacent formations, Book Cliffs Area, Colorado and Utah

This study updates a stratigraphic cross section published as plate 2 in Kirschbaum and Hettinger (2004) Digital Data Series 69-G ( http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-069/dds-069-g/ ). The datum is a marine/tidal ravinement surface within the Cozzette Sandstone Member of the Iles Formation and the Thompson Canyon Sandstone and Sulphur Canyon Sandstone Beds of the Neslen Formation. One of the cores shown was included on the original cross section, and new core descriptions have been added to the upper part of the cored interval. A new core description (S178) is included in this report. Cores are stored in the U.S. Geological Survey Core Research Facility at the Denver Federal Center, Colorado. The following information has also been added to help define the stratigraphic framework: 1) At least five claystones interpreted as altered volcanic ashes have been identified and may give future workers a correlation tool within the largely continental section. 2) Thickness and general geometry of the Sego Sandstone, Buck Tongue of the Mancos Shale, and Castlegate Sandstone have been added to provide additional stratigraphic context. 3) The geometry in the Sego Sandstone, Buck Tongue of the Mancos Shale, and Castlegate Sandstone has been added to provide additional stratigraphic context. 4) Ammonite collections are from Gill and Hail. The zone of Didymoceras nebrascense projected into the East Salt Wash area is based on correlation of the flooding surface at the base of the Cozzette Member to this point as shown in Kirschbaum and Hettinger. 5) A leaf locality of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is shown in its approximate stratigraphic position near Thompson Canyon. 6) A dinosaur locality of the Natural History Museum of Utah is shown in the Horse Canyon area measured section at the stratigraphic position where it was extracted.

Utah, Colorado↗
USGS2011

Sedimentology and reservoir heterogeneity of a valley-fill deposit– A field guide to the Dakota Sandstone of the San Rafael Swell, Utah

Valley-fill deposits form a significant class of hydrocarbon reservoirs in many basins of the world. Maximizing recovery of fluids from these reservoirs requires an understanding of the scales of fluid-flow heterogeneity present within the valley-fill system. The Upper Cretaceous Dakota Sandstone in the San Rafael Swell, Utah contains well exposed, relatively accessible outcrops that allow a unique view of the external geometry and internal complexity of a set of rocks interpreted to be deposits of an incised valley fill. These units can be traced on outcrop for tens of miles, and individual sandstone bodies are exposed in three dimensions because of modern erosion in side canyons in a semiarid setting and by exhumation of the overlying, easily erodible Mancos Shale. The Dakota consists of two major units: (1) a lower amalgamated sandstone facies dominated by large-scale cross stratification with several individual sandstone bodies ranging in thickness from 8 to 28 feet, ranging in width from 115 to 150 feet, and having lengths as much as 5,000 feet, and (2) an upper facies composed of numerous mud-encased lenticular sandstones, dominated by ripple-scale lamination, in bedsets ranging in thickness from 5 to 12 feet. The lower facies is interpreted to be fluvial, probably of mainly braided stream origin that exhibits multiple incisions amalgamated into a complex sandstone body. The upper facies has lower energy, probably anastomosed channels encased within alluvial and coastal-plain floodplain sediments. The Dakota valley-fill complex has multiple scales of heterogeneity that could affect fluid flow in similar oil and gas subsurface reservoirs. The largest scale heterogeneity is at the formation level, where the valley-fill complex is sealed within overlying and underlying units. Within the valley-fill complex, there are heterogeneities between individual sandstone bodies, and at the smallest scale, internal heterogeneities within the bodies themselves. These different scales of fluid-flow compartmentalization present a challenge to hydrocarbon exploration targeting paleovalley deposits, and producing fields containing these types of reservoirs may have significant bypassed pay, especially where well spacing is large.

Utah↗
USGS2009

An estimate of recoverable heavy oil resources of the Orinoco Oil Belt, Venezuela

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 Survey estimated the recoverable oil resources of the Orinoco Oil Belt Assessment Unit. This estimate relied mainly on published geologic and engineering data for reservoirs (net oil-saturated sandstone thickness and extent), petrophysical properties (porosity, water saturation, and formation volume factors), recovery factors determined by pilot projects, and estimates of volumes of oil-in-place. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean volume of 513 billion barrels of technically recoverable heavy oil in the Orinoco Oil Belt Assessment Unit of the East Venezuela Basin Province; the range is 380 to 652 billion barrels. The Orinoco Oil Belt Assessment Unit thus contains one of the largest recoverable oil accumulations in the world.

Fact Sheet↗
USGS2008

Burial History, Thermal Maturity, and Oil and Gas Generation History of Source Rocks in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming and Montana

Burial history, thermal maturity, and timing of oil and gas generation were modeled for seven key source-rock units at eight well locations throughout the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming and Montana. Also modeled was the timing of cracking to gas of Phosphoria Formation-sourced oil in the Permian Park City Formation reservoirs at two well locations. Within the basin boundary, the Phosphoria is thin and only locally rich in organic carbon; it is thought that the Phosphoria oil produced from Park City and other reservoirs migrated from the Idaho-Wyoming thrust belt. Other petroleum source rocks include the Cretaceous Thermopolis Shale, Mowry Shale, Frontier Formation, Cody Shale, Mesaverde and Meeteetse Formations, and the Tertiary (Paleocene) Fort Union Formation. Locations (wells) selected for burial history reconstructions include three in the deepest parts of the Bighorn Basin (Emblem Bench, Red Point/Husky, and Sellers Draw), three at intermediate depths (Amoco BN 1, Santa Fe Tatman, and McCulloch Peak), and two at relatively shallow locations (Dobie Creek and Doctor Ditch). The thermal maturity of source rocks is greatest in the deep central part of the basin and decreases to the south, east, and north toward the basin margins. The Thermopolis and Mowry Shales are predominantly gas-prone source rocks, containing a mix of Type-III and Type-II kerogens. The Frontier, Cody, Mesaverde, Meeteetse, and Fort Union Formations are gas-prone source rocks containing Type-III kerogen. Modeling results indicate that in the deepest areas, (1) the onset of petroleum generation from Cretaceous rocks occurred from early Paleocene through early Eocene time, (2) peak petroleum generation from Cretaceous rocks occurred during Eocene time, and (3) onset of gas generation from the Fort Union Formation occurred during early Eocene time and peak generation occurred from late Eocene to early Miocene time. Only in the deepest part of the basin did the oil generated from the Thermopolis and Mowry Shales start generating gas from secondary cracking, which occurred in the late Eocene to Miocene. Also, based on modeling results, gas generation from the cracking of Phosphoria oil reservoired in the Park City Formation began in the late Eocene in the deep part of the basin but did not anywhere reach peak generation.

Scientific Investigations Report↗
USGS2007

Chapter 4: The Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary Composite Total Petroleum System, Wind River Basin, Wyoming

The Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary Composite Total Petroleum System (TPS) of the Wind River Basin Province includes all strata from the base of the Lower Cretaceous Cloverly Formation to the base of the Waltman Shale Member of the Paleocene age Fort Union Formation and, where the Waltman is absent, includes strata as young as the Eocene Wind River Formation. Locally, Cretaceous-sourced gas migrated into strata as old as the Mississippian Madison Limestone, and in these areas the TPS extends stratigraphically downward to include these reservoirs. The extensive vertical migration of gases in highly fractured areas of the Wind River Basin led to the commingling of gases from several Upper Cretaceous and lower Tertiary sources, thus only two petroleum systems are recognized in these rocks, the Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary Composite TPS, the subject of this report, and the Waltman Shale TPS described by Roberts and others (Chapter 5, this CD-ROM). The Cretaceous-lower Tertiary Composite TPS was subdivided into (1) seven continuous gas assessment units (AU): (a) Frontier-Muddy Continuous Gas AU, (b) Cody Sandstone Continuous Gas AU, (c) Mesaverde--Meeteetse Sandstone Gas AU, (d) Lance-Fort Union Sandstone Gas AU, (e) Mesaverde Coalbed Gas AU, (f) Meeteetse Coalbed Gas AU, and (g) Fort Union Coalbed Gas AU; (2) one continuous oil assessement unit--- Cody Fractured Shale Continuous Oil AU; and (3) one conventional assessment Unit--- Cretaceous-Tertiary Conventional Oil and Gas AU. Estimates of undiscovered resources having the potential for additions to reserves were made for all but the Cody Fractured Shale Continuous Oil AU, which is considered hypothetical and was not quantitively assessed. The mean estimate of the total oil is 41.99 million barrels, mean estimate of gas is 2.39 trillion cubic feet, and mean estimate of natural gas liquids is 20.55 million barrels. For gas, 480.66 billion cubic feet (BCFG) is estimated for the Frontier-Muddy Continuous Gas AU, 115.34 BCFG for the Cody Sandstone Continuous Gas AU, 383.16 BCFG for the Mesaverde-Meeteetse Sandstone Continuous Gas AU, 711.30 BCFG for the Lance-Fort Union Sandstone Gas AU, 107.18 BCFG for the Mesaverde Coalbed Gas AU, 21.29 BCFG for the Meeteetse Coalbed Gas AU, and 118.08 BCFG for the Fort Union Coalbed Gas AU. All the undiscovered oil and 98.94 BCFG of undiscovered gas is in the Cretaceous-Tertiary Conventional Oil and Gas AU.

Data Series↗