Thomas M. Finn 2019 <p>The Wind River Basin in central Wyoming is one of many structural and&nbsp;sedimentary basins that formed in the Rocky Mountain foreland during&nbsp;the Laramide orogeny. The basin is bounded by the Washakie, Owl Creek, and southern Bighorn uplifts on the north, the Casper arch on the east,&nbsp;the Granite Mountains uplift on the south, and Wind River uplift on&nbsp;the west.</p><p>The first commercial oil well in Wyoming was drilled at Dallas dome&nbsp;near an oil seep along the southwestern edge of the Wind River Basin&nbsp;in 1884. Since then, many important conventional oil and gas fields,&nbsp;that produce from reservoirs ranging in age from Mississippian through&nbsp;Tertiary, have been discovered in this basin. In addition, an extensive&nbsp;unconventional (continuous) overpressured basin-centered gas&nbsp;accumulation has been identified in Cretaceous and Tertiary strata in&nbsp;the deeper parts of the basin. It has been suggested that various Upper&nbsp;Cretaceous marine shales, including the Cody Shale, are the principal&nbsp;hydrocarbon source rocks for many of these accumulations. With recent&nbsp;advances in horizontal drilling and multistage fracture stimulation,&nbsp;there has been an increase in exploration and completion of wells in&nbsp;equivalent marine shales in other Rocky Mountain Laramide basins that&nbsp;were traditionally thought of only as hydrocarbon source rocks.&nbsp;The maps presented in this report were constructed as part of a project&nbsp;carried out by the U.S. Geological Survey to characterize the geologic&nbsp;framework of potential undiscovered continuous (unconventional) oil&nbsp;and gas resources of the Niobrara interval of the Upper Cretaceous Cody&nbsp;Shale in the Wind River Basin in central Wyoming.</p> application/pdf 10.3133/sim3427 en U.S. Geological Survey Structure contour and overburden maps of the Niobrara interval of the Upper Cretaceous Cody Shale in the Wind River Basin, Wyoming reports