Uinta Piceance Basin stratigraphic column

The Piceance Basin is a geologic structural basin in northwestern

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It includes geologic formations from

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

in age, but the thickest section is made up of rocks from the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

Period. The basin contains reserves of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

, and

oil shale Oil shale is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons can be produced. In addition to kerogen, general composition of oil shales constitute ...

. The name likely derives from the

Shoshoni The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ) are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshone: southern Idaho * Western Shoshone: Nevada, northern Utah * Goshute: western Utah, east ...

word ''/piasonittsi/'' meaning “tall grass” (''/pia-/'' ‘big’ and ''/soni-/'' ‘grass’).

Hydrocarbon resources

In 2016 USGS released an assessment of the resources of the Mancos Shale of the Piceance Basin in Colorado and Utah, "a total of assessed technically recoverable mean resources of 74 million barrels of shale oil, 66.3 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 45 million barrels of natural gas liquids."

Natural gas

The basin has come to increasing public attention in recent years because of widespread drilling to extract natural gas. The primary target of gas development has been the

Williams Fork Formation The Williams Fork Formation is a Campanian (Edmontonian) geologic formation of the Mesaverde Group in Colorado. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation, most notably ''Pentaceratops sternbergii'',. Other ...

of the

Mesaverde Group The Mesaverde Group is a Late Cretaceous stratigraphic group found in areas of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, in the Western United States. History The Mesaverde Formation was first described by W.H.Holmes in 1877 during the Hayden ...

, of Cretaceous age. The Williams Fork is a several-thousand-foot thick section of shale, sandstone and coal deposited in a coastal plain environment. The formation has long been known to contain natural gas. The sandstone reservoirs have low permeability and limited areal extent, however, which made gas wells uneconomic in the past. In 1969 an atomic device was detonated as part of a scientific experiment in a well drilled into the Williams Fork Formation southwest of

Rifle, Colorado Rifle is a home rule municipality in and the most populous community of Garfield County, Colorado, United States. The population was 10,437 at the 2020 census. Rifle is a regional center of the cattle ranching industry located along Interstate ...

to determine whether the device would fracture rock and enable extraction of natural gas in commercial quantities. Project Rulison, as it was called, was successful in liberating natural gas in commercial quantities, but was abandoned when the gas was determined to be unusable due to radioactivity. Advances in

hydraulic fracturing Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of bedrock formations by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of "frack ...

within the past decade, along with higher gas prices, have made gas wells broadly economic in the area. In 2007 the basin contained five of the top 50 US gas fields in proved reserves (Grand Valley #16, Parachute #24, Mamm Creek #27, Rulison #29, and Piceance Creek #46).

Oil shale

Increasing demand for energy resources has spurred interest in energy alternatives such as oil shale. The Piceance Basin contains one of the thickest and richest oil shale deposits in the world and is the focus of most on-going oil shale research and development extraction projects in the U.S. The Piceance Basin has an estimated 1.525 trillion barrels of in-place oil shale resources, and an estimated 43.3 billion tons of in-place

nahcolite Nahcolite is a soft, colourless or white carbonate mineral with the composition of sodium bicarbonate ( Na H C O3) also called thermokalite. It crystallizes in the monoclinic system. Nahcolite was first described in 1928 for an occurrence in ...

resources in the Piceance Basin. This mineral is embedded with oil shale in many areas. On 2 April 2009 The U.S. Geological Survey updated its assessment of in-place oil shale resources in the Piceance Basin in western Colorado. This new assessment is about 50 percent larger than the 1989 assessment of about one trillion barrels. Almost all of this increase is due to assessments of new geographic areas and subsurface zones that had too little data for previous research and assessments. "For the first time in 20 years, we have an updated assessment of in-place oil shale in the Piceance Basin of Colorado," said US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. "The USGS scientific report shows significant quantities of oil locked up in the shale rocks of the Piceance Basin. I believe it demonstrates the need for our continued research and development efforts."

Production

The Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline was proposed to carry hydrocarbon production to the

Jordan Cove Energy Project The Jordan Cove Energy Project was a proposal by Calgary-based energy company Pembina to build a liquefied natural gas export terminal within the International Port of Coos Bay, Oregon. The natural gas would have been transported to the termin ...

Coos Bay, Oregon Coos Bay ( Coos language: Atsixiis) is a city located in Coos County, Oregon, United States, where the Coos River enters Coos Bay on the Pacific Ocean. The city borders the city of North Bend, and together they are often referred to as one ent ...

. The

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is the United States federal agency that regulates the transmission and wholesale sale of electricity and natural gas in interstate commerce and regulates the transportation of oil by pipeline in ...

denied the project a permit on March 11, 2016. The reason given was that

Veresen Veresen Inc. was a Calgary, Alberta-based energy infrastructure company with three main lines of business: pipelines, natural gas and power generation. It was a publicly-traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and was known as Fort Chicago ...

had not demonstrated the need for the project, and that the benefits from the project would not outweigh the harm done to individual landowners to justify the use of

eminent domain Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...

. The pipeline's backers had not yet found buyers for the natural gas. On March 25, Veresen announced that they had found a buyer for the gas that would be exported, which was a consortium of Japanese utilities. They suggested they would appeal the decision by FERC, and they had 30 days from the March 11 decision to do so. As of May 2018 energy producers hoped to revive the project.

Geology

The Piceance Basin forms a geologic structural basin, and is the source of commercial oil and gas production. Separated from the

Uinta Basin The Uinta Basin (also known as the Uintah Basin) is a physiographic section of the larger Colorado Plateaus province, which in turn is part of the larger Intermontane Plateaus physiographic division. It is also a geologic structural basin in ...

by the Douglas Creek Arch, both basins formed during the

Laramide Orogeny The Laramide orogeny was a time period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago. The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the o ...

, and are bounded by the Charleston-Nebo

thrust fault A thrust fault is a break in the Earth's crust, across which older rocks are pushed above younger rocks. Thrust geometry and nomenclature Reverse faults A thrust fault is a type of reverse fault that has a dip of 45 degrees or less. If ...

, the Uinta Basin boundary fault, and the

Grand Hogback The Grand Hogback is a 70-mile long, curving, spine-like ridge in Western Colorado that extends from near McClure Pass in Pitkin County, Colorado, Pitkin County through Garfield County, Colorado, Garfield County and then to near Meeker, Colorado, ...

monocline. According to the USGS Uinta-Piceance Assessment Team, "The black-

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

facies In geology, a facies ( , ; same pronunciation and spelling in the plural) is a body of rock with specified characteristics, which can be any observable attribute of rocks (such as their overall appearance, composition, or condition of formatio ...

of the

Green River Formation The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine ...

is the main petroleum system of

Tertiary Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...

age whereas the Mahogany zone of the Green River Formation is a minor component. The

Mancos Group The Mancos Shale or Mancos Group is a Late Cretaceous (Upper Cretaceous) Formation (stratigraphy), geologic formation of the Western United States. The Mancos Shale was first described by Cross and Purington in 1899 and was named for exposure ...

and equivalent rocks are the main source of Cretaceous oil and a major contributor of gas in the basin, whereas the Upper Cretaceous Mesaverde is a lesser contributor of oil but a significant source for gas.

Ferron Ferron (born Deborah Foisy on 1 June 1952) is a Canadian-born singer-songwriter and poet. In addition to gaining fame as one of Canada's most respected songwriters, Ferron, who is openly lesbian, became one of the earliest and most influential ...

Sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

coals are known to be a source of coalbed methane. The most prominent source of oil from Paleozoic rocks is the

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.9 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleoz ...

Phosphoria Formation The Phosphoria Formation of the western United States is a geological formation of Early Permian age.Behnken, F.H., Wardlaw, B.R. and Stout, L.N., 1986, Conodont biostratigraphy of the Permian Meade Peak Phosphatic Shale Member, Phosphoria Format ...

References

* US Geological Survey (Mar. 2009)
''Nahcolite Resources of the Green River Formation, Piceance Basin, Northwestern Colorado''
Fact Sheet 2009-3011, PDF file, retrieved 5 April 2009. * US Geological Survey (Mar. 2009)
''Assessment of In-Place Oil Shale Resources, Green River Formation, Piceance Basin, Western Colorado''
Fact Sheet 2009-3012, PDF file, retrieved 5 April 2009. * Ronald C. Johnson and others
''An Assessment of In-Place Oil Shale Resource in the Green River Formation, Piceance Basin, Colorado''
US Geological Survey, retrieved 5 April 2009. *Thomas, Judith C
''Overview of Groundwater Quality in the Piceance Basin, Western Colorado, 1946-2009''
US Geological Survey, retrieved 16 August 2013.

External links

* {{Authority control Geologic provinces of Colorado Sedimentary basins of North America Oil shale formations Oil shale in the United States