Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Colorado's primary oil-shale resource for vertical modified in-situ processes

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6990247

Vertical modified in-situ processes for oil-shale development require an accessible, thick and continuous oil-shale section. In Colorado's Piceance Creek Basin the Mahogany zone and its overlying oil-shale is the Green River Formation section that best meets these requirements. This oil-shale section is described and evaluated in detail with contour maps of richness, thickness, and oil resource in place. Seven cross sections were constructed to provide the framework necessary for basin-wide correlation of assay results from 189 cores. These correlations form the basis for detailed contouring and resource evaluation of the Mahogany zone, A-groove, and 5 overlying oil-shale sections. Total oil in place basin-wide in this primary resource is 419 billion barrels (61 billion tonne) with 85% occurring in areas with resource exceeding 400,000 bbls per acre (143,000 tonne/hectare). 95% of the resource occurs where average richness of the total section exceeds 14 gallons per ton (58 liter/tonne). Thickness of the continuous section reaches 600 feet (183 meters) and virtually all the resource occurs in sections thicker than 300 feet (91 meters). 24 figs.

Research Organization:
Department of Energy, Laramie, Wyo. (USA). Laramie Energy Research Center
OSTI ID:
6990247
Report Number(s):
LERC/RI-78/2
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English