GILLETTE, Wyo. — The U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, released its assessment of potential oil and gas formations under parts of Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.
That’s according to a release from the USGS, which states that its assessment reveals that there are technically recoverable resources of 47 million barrels of oil and 876 billion cubic feet of gas.
“Since exploration began in the area in the 1920s, the upper Paleozoic reservoirs of the Wind River, Bighorn and Powder River basins have produced 4 billion barrels of oil — as much oil as the U.S. consumes in six months at the current rate of consumption,” the release states.
The USGS began performing oil and gas assessments 50 years ago, after an oil embargo against the United States inspired the need to understand the occurrence, distribution and potential volumes of undiscovered resources.
“USGS energy assessments typically focus on undiscovered resources — areas where science tells us there may be a resource that industry hasn’t discovered yet. In this case, after a century of production, the upper Paleozoic reservoirs of the Wind River, Bighorn and Powder River basins have little remaining undiscovered oil,” said Sarah Ryker, acting director of the USGS.
According to the release, the embargo led to a mandate that in turn led to the USGS using geologic science and data to assess undiscovered oil and gas resources to help meet America’s needs.
“The work continues today — identifying new resources for domestic production as well as international resources that affect market conditions — an important part of the USGS mission to provide actionable insight to U.S. leaders, other Federal agencies, industry and the public,” the release states.
The release notes that in 1995, the USGS began conducting assessments of unconventional, technically recoverable resources.
“The shift to horizontal drilling with fracking has revolutionized oil production, and we’ve changed with it,” said Christopher Schenk, USGS geologist, noting that the Bakken Shale deposit in North Dakota had a few hundred vertical wells when the USGS first assessed the area, and that has grown to tens of thousands of wells today.
