National Assessment of Oil and Gas Project:

Oil Shale and Nahcolite Resources of the Piceance Basin, Colorado

U.S. Geological Survey Oil Shale Assessment Team

Available on CD-ROM contact  Energy Team CD Distribution

Contents

• ReadMeFile (607 kB)

• Chapter 1 (40.6 MB)
  An Assessment of In-Place Oil Shale Resources in the Green River Formation, Piceance Basin, Colorado
  By Ronald C. Johnson, Tracey J. Mercier, Michael E. Brownfield, Michael P. Pantea, and Jesse G. Self

• Chapter 2 (12.6 MB)
  Nahcolite Resources in the Green River Formation, Piceance Basin, Colorado
  By Michael E. Brownfield, Tracey J. Mercier, Ronald C. Johnson, and Jesse G. Self

• Chapter 3 (16.3 MB)
  Methodology for Calculating Oil Shale and Nahcolite Resources for the Piceance Basin
  By Tracey J. Mercier, Michael E. Brownfield, and Ronald C. Johnson

• Chapter 4 (362 kB)
  The GIS Project for the Geologic Assessment of In-Place Oil Shale Resources of the Piceance Basin, Colorado
  By Tracey J. Mercier, Gregory L. Gunther, and Christopher C. Skinner

• Chapter 5 (1.4 MB)
  Stratigraphic Cross Sections of the Eocene Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin, Northwestern Colorado
  By Jesse G. Self, Ronald C. Johnson, Michael E. Brownfield, and Tracey J. Mercier

• Chapter 6 (6.9 MB)
  Calculation of Overburden Above the Mahogany Zone in the Piceance Basin, Colorado
  By Tracey J. Mercier

• Chapter 7 (1.8 MB)
  Fischer Assay Histograms of Oil Shale Drill Cores and Cuttings from the Piceance Basin, Northwestern Colorado
  By Jesse G. Self, Michael E. Brownfield, Ronald C. Johnson, and Tracey J. Mercier

GIS/Data/Metadata

• Spatial Data
• Piceance Basin Oil Shale Database ZIP (21.3 MB)
• Piceance Basin Nahcolite Database ZIP (10.9 MB)

Introduction 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 westernmost Colorado, and the Greater Green River Basin of southwest Wyoming, northwestern Colorado, and northeastern Utah also contain large resources of oil shale in the Green River Formation, and these two basins will be assessed separately. Estimated in-place oil is about 1.5 trillion barrels, based on Fischer a ssay results from boreholes drilled to evaluate oil shale, making it the largest oil shale deposit in the world. The estimated in-place nahcolite resource is about 43.3 billion short tons.