The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently completed a comprehensive assessment of in-place oil in oil shales in the Eocene Green River in the Greater Green River Basin, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. A database was compiled that includes about 47,000 Fischer assays from 186 core holes and 240 rotary drill holes. Most of the oil yield data were analyzed by the former U.S. Bureau of Mines oil shale laboratory in Laramie, Wyoming, and some analyses were made by private laboratories. Total in-place resources for the three assessed units in the Green River Formation are: (1) Tipton Shale Member, 362,816 million barrels of oil (MMBO), (2) Wilkins Peak Member, 704,991 MMBO, and (3) LaClede Bed of the Laney Member, 377,184 MMBO, for a total of 1.44 trillion barrels of oil in place. This compares with estimated in-place resources for the Piceance Basin of Colorado of 1.53 trillion barrels and estimated in-place resources for the Uinta Basin of Utah and Colorado of 1.32 trillion barrels. Click here to return to Main Contents

This report presents the methodology used in the geology-based assessment of the in-place oil resources in 18 oil shale zones of the Eocene Green River Formation in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. The focus is on the methodology used to (1) convert legacy data; (2) analyze the data through application of current computer techniques; and (3) ultimately quantify the resultant data using spreadsheet, database, and geographic information systems (GIS) software.

This report presents the methodology used in the geology-based assessment of the in-place oil resources in 18 oil shale zones of the Eocene Green River Formation in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. The focus is on the methodology used to (1) convert legacy data; (2) analyze the data through application of current computer techniques; and (3) ultimately quantify the resultant data using spreadsheet, database, and geographic information systems (GIS) software.

ESRI GRID raster datasets were created to display and quantify oil shale resources for three zones in the Green River and Washakie Basins, southwestern Wyoming as part of a National Oil Shale Assessment. The oil shale zones in descending order are: LaClede Bed of the Laney Member of the Eocene Green River Formation, Wilkins Peak Member of the Eocene Green River Formation , and the Tipton Member of the Eocene Green River Formation. Each raster cell represents a one-acre square of the land surface and contains values for either oil yield in barrels per acre, gallons per ton, or isopach thickness, in feet, as defined by the grid name: *_b (barrels per acre), *_g (gallons per ton), and *_i (isopach thickness) where "*" can be replaced by the name of the oil shale zone.

ESRI GRID raster datasets were created to display and quantify oil shale resources for three zones in the Green River and Washakie Basins, southwestern Wyoming as part of a National Oil Shale Assessment. The oil shale zones in descending order are: LaClede Bed of the Laney Member of the Eocene Green River Formation, Wilkins Peak Member of the Eocene Green River Formation , and the Tipton Member of the Eocene Green River Formation. Each raster cell represents a one-acre square of the land surface and contains values for either oil yield in barrels per acre, gallons per ton, or isopach thickness, in feet, as defined by the grid name: *_b (barrels per acre), *_g (gallons per ton), and *_i (isopach thickness) where "*" can be replaced by the name of the oil shale zone.

This file contains points that describe locations of oil shale core holes, rotary holes, and surface sections in the state of Wyoming and is available as an ESRI shapefile, Google Earth KMZ file, and ASCII text file.

This file contains points that describe locations of oil shale core holes, rotary holes, and surface sections in the state of Wyoming and is available as an ESRI shapefile, Google Earth KMZ file, and ASCII text file.

A detailed description of the methodology employed to perform a geology-based assessment of in-place oil shale and nahcolite resources in the Piceance Basin of northwestern Colorado is presented here. Considerable advancements in computer and database technology since the previous oil shale assessment in 1989 provided the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessment team with new tools to convert legacy data, store and manipulate new data, perform calculations, and quantify, report, and display the assessment results. Relational database and geographic information systems (GIS) software were used seamlessly to streamline the storage and manipulation of the data. A deterministic spatial interpolation method, the Radial Basis Function (RBF), was used to generate isopach and isoresource models in the GIS software, which provided a spatial statistics function to summarize the prediction models and determine the in-place oil shale and nahcolite resource totals.

A detailed description of the methodology employed to perform a geology-based assessment of in-place oil shale and nahcolite resources in the Piceance Basin of northwestern Colorado is presented here. Considerable advancements in computer and database technology since the previous oil shale assessment in 1989 provided the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessment team with new tools to convert legacy data, store and manipulate new data, perform calculations, and quantify, report, and display the assessment results. Relational database and geographic information systems (GIS) software were used seamlessly to streamline the storage and manipulation of the data. A deterministic spatial interpolation method, the Radial Basis Function (RBF), was used to generate isopach and isoresource models in the GIS software, which provided a spatial statistics function to summarize the prediction models and determine the in-place oil shale and nahcolite resource totals.

This reflects a collection of tabular, geospatial and textual information from 3 CD-ROMs published in 1995 and 1996 from the USGS in support of the 1995 National Oil and Gas Assessment Project. This includes USGS DDS Series 30, 35 and 36. This collection was available online through various web platforms hosted by USGS Central Energy Resources Science Center / Central Energy Team since initial recovery from the CD's in early 2000's. This contains the data collection from the original data archives. Over 11,000 files are part of this collection, with 1,524 shapefiles, 648 PDFs and 189 Tab-delimited data files. Limited qa/qc was performed on this due to time constraints and acknowledging that this is a representation of a product over 20 years old.