Multiproxy environmental characterization of lake level cycles in the Green River Formation of Utah and Colorado

Whiteside, Jessica H. and Van Keuren, Marc A. (2009) Multiproxy environmental characterization of lake level cycles in the Green River Formation of Utah and Colorado (Utah Geological Survey Open File Report, 544) Salt Lake City, US. Utah Geological Survey 22pp.

Abstract

The Eocene Green River Formation represents one of the largest petroleum resources in the world, and certainly the largest petroleum resource in the state of Utah. While the oil shales have figured prominently in the literature for the past century, surprisingly little basic knowledge of the geochemistry of these deposits exists, especially within the contex t of the characteristic and permeating lacustrine cyclicity. Competing theories of tectonic versus climatic drivers for these cycles make different predictions about the nature of the oil-shale geochemistry and are thus important in understanding the predictability of oil-shale resources, especially in other lacustrine petroleum systems that are geologically less well characterized. Here we document the ecosystem context of the lacustrine cyclicity using sedimentary facies, oil-shale yield, bulk nitrogen (?15N) and carbon isotopic (?13C) signatures of organic matter, and specific biomarker hydrocarbons (?13C alk) sampled at millennial resolution through a series of cycles at multiple localities in core and outcrop. This project is relevant to solicitation purposes (#2) oil resource potential and (#3) unconventional oil and gas resources such as tar sands and oil shale; it should lead to a greater understanding of the most fundamental aspects of the depositional history of these oil shales as well as the predictive power of facies models, all of which should ultimately play a part in Utah’s hydrocarbon potential and U.S. petroleum independence.

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