Piceance Basin

The Piceance Basin is a geologic structural basin in northwestern Colorado, in the United States. It includes geologic formations from Cambrian to Holocene in age, but the thickest section is comprised of rocks from the Cretaceous Period. The basin contains reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil shale.

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 of the Mesaverde Group, or 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. However, the sandstone reservoirs have low permeability and limited areal extent, which made gas wells uneconomic in the past. Advances in hydraulic fracturing technology within the past decade, along with higher gas prices, have made gas wells broadly economic in the area.

Oil shale

Increasing demand for energy resources has spurred interest in energy alternatives such as oil shale. The United States Geological Survey has researched the geology of oil shale, especially the extensive Green River deposits of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The USGS is making oil shale information accessible via the Internet. Planned products include digital-format shale-oil analyses, stratigraphic and lithologic information, geophysical logs, bibliographic references, and geologic maps of oil shale lands in the western United States.

USGS oil shale research activities include:

* Utah Geological Survey Collaboration.
* Archive and update critical oil shale information.
* Development of an oil shale clearinghouse of available USGS reports, papers, and databases.
* Monitoring of geologic, technologic, and environmental developments related to unconventional fossil fuel energy sources.
* USGS Core Research Center maintenance of core and sample collections.
* Collaboration with industry and government in fossil-fuel research.

ee also

* Oil shale geology