Show OIL PROBLEMS IN THE UINTAH BASIN X by professor earl douglass in the present article at least I 1 will ask to be excused for using the pronoun of the first person and singular number when referring to the present writer it is not desired to appear egotistical but this will make the discussion clearer and less confusing other writers will be quoted and it is desired that there shall be no doubt as to who is responsible for the opinions expressed if the pronoun we were used some might have a vague idea that I 1 have someone else associated with me in in my present beliefs as to the occurrence of oil in the uinta basin so far as I 1 am this would be a mistake at least so far as geologists who are interested in petroleum are concerned there are some however who make no claim to being oil geol but are familiar in a general way with the geological conditions who agree with me at least in part petroleum and structure man many y will undoubtedly admit that there is or has been much petroleum in the formation which has been discussed but they will ask what about the structure Is that favorable at the present time when the possibilities 01 of oil are mentioned in this part of the world at least the first and most prominent questions which are raised and discussed are those of structure we do not hear so much about the of oil producing or oil bearing strata or ic oil showings but the question is asked have you any structure we hear of oil geologists who do not go much on oil showings anyway what would you think of a prospector forthe for the precious metals who paid little or no attention to float it might lead him to a lode or it might not depending on his knowledge of the geological conditions if he understands the geology of the country as every prospector should he ought to know in a general way where the float came from and whether or not there is a likelihood that he can locate its source of course if it has come from hundreds of miles away in glacial drift he probably will not go after it if the ore is lean he will not make so great an effort to trace it up so with the oil prospector he must use his knowledge and judgment as to what the signs indicate indica te A rancher asked a few days ago but laughed as soon as he had said it Is oil on the water any sign of oil absurd as it may seem it appears to be somewhat of a errors in article IX of this series june 15 1922 in line 8 from arom top of P page ge 12 first column and in lines 13 and 10 from the bottom of the page read adsorbed instead of absorbed A sponge may absorb but a mineral colloid in the shale may adsorb a colloid in the oil and hold it against the action of solvents please turn the magazine wrong side up to make the first picture on page 12 right side up this will rightly represent the exudation of thick oil from the thin layer as going down ts instead tead of up question whether or not the presence of oil in the rock is Is any indication of oil it has been said that one or more prospectors have spent considerable time in the basin but did not like the indications because there was so mu much ch showing 0 of oil the idea undoubtedly was that so much of the oil bearing strata was exposed on the surface that it was feared that the oil had escaped and there were no good reservoirs beneath immensity of the basin country many have examined heavy outcrops and other oil showings and have sped away merrily and hopefully through the country where the roads were passable and have afterward 6 gone one away rowing and have given the report that there is no structure do we blame them evidently not at least not many of them they represented some oil company they were sent to look over the prospects perhaps they were restricted to a few days or a few weeks to see Nv whether hether or not there were good prospects for oil in a new and unfamiliar area of square miles A man sitting in his office cannot have the slightest conception of what this means let him walk over it once the shortest way only 70 to miles of rough country and he may begin to get a faint idea of what it means to get even an outline of the geological conditions in this vast region of canyons steep far extending cliffs and badland wildernesses wilder nesses perhaps he may go back and give the heartened disheartened dis expert a month or wo vo at least to find whether or not the prospects for oil are good some suppose that there is underground water in the moon if any of us could be sent to that strange and unfamiliar place with only a few days to decide the matter of the feasibility of getting water by drilling we would doubtless come back tired and thirsty and would not give a very encouraging cou raging report when a prospector realizes that the first well or the first few wells will require perhaps a hundred thousand dollars or more he undoubtedly feels that the safest thing that lie he can do for himself and the company is to make an adverse report perhaps too the man is not a geologist in the true sense and would not claim to be such but as an engineer but he is the man that the company wished to go or it would not have sent him the idea seems quite prevalent that one who can find and map a structure is an oil geologist it is said that oil companies now realize the value of geology and of geological work some undoubtedly do but as a rule I 1 for one do not believe that this is true if it is true why do they employ engineers in instead steal of geologists and why when they do employ a geologist za expect him to do only the engineering part of his work or principally that and this on limited and pye predetermined determined types of structure the significance of this may not be realized b by y all just at this time y but it is hoped that the concrete examples which are to be brought to view in the forth coming articles will make this clear geological structure a broad term but what is this structure which is being searched for so eagerly geological structure is a broad term and structure in relation to petroleum is just as broad when it is known that there are oil producing strata one cannot tell just where there should be a concentration of oil unless lie he is familiar with the whole geological structure to a certain depth at least of the whole region this too we hope will become clear as we proceed but if you inquire into the matter you will find that a minor anticline or a dome is the structure for which the oil seeker is in quest if it were in certain portions of wyoming lie he would undoubtedly be on the right track for the quickest results in the richly portions of the uinta basin however the structure is quite different typical domes are very rare though in passing through the basin as has been previously seen several anticlines anti clines are crossed though they do not appear to attract much attention one who is not a professional oil geologist but who knows the general structure of the basin naturally asks acin in a vast enclosed basin which contains mountains of rock veins of hydrocarbons of unparalleled ralle led extent and from 1000 to 2000 fiet in thickness and the rim of this basin is dipping from every side inward with no chance of escape for the oil to any great extent is it possible that the oil could not be found in anything but a typical dome especially where there are few such structures or none for it to get into just what is it going to do if it is trapped there in the basin and it cannot get out and there are no domes that it can find cunningham craig says that oil will go where it can but it is just as much a truism that it will not go where it cannot go by any physical possibility let it be clearly understood that I 1 am not attacking the well known truth that domes under the proper structure in a general sense do often contain oil and in great quantities but I 1 do attack the idea that domes and oil structures are synonymous terms or ideas an oil ture is a geological structure which has trapped petroleum domes bomes and anticlines anti clines are structures which under favorable conditions may trap the oil if there is any to trap but they are by no means the only traps they are however the most prominent and the easiest to find and map their discovery and mapping does not involve any extended knowl dege of geology or of the origin and subsequent behavior of oil but another day is coming on the present basis of exploitation the future for the oil supply seems gloomy A large part of the domes which appear to be favorable have been punctured we are warned and that by eminent geologists that the end of the oil supply is practically in sight but on what are these predictions based are they not based on the results of past experience I 1 am not emphasizing the fact just now that only a few spots on the earth have been at all carefully care tuly studied in fe reference ference to the possibilities for oil and those which have een partly developed have been exploited under tinder the dominance of a one sided theory of oil accumulation I 1 have not the exact data but if the matter were looked up I 1 have little doubt that it would appear that the discoveries co veries in other structures in in a great apropo proportion artion of cases has been due to what we call accident or to the operation of unorthodox wildcatters wildcat it would be interesting to know whether or not the proportion of successful wells in what would be termed not proper structures has not been as great as in the case of those which have been drilled in typical anticline oil in many types of structure so the present statistics and the future estimates are based principally it seems on the production from one type of structure it is admitted by geologists and has been proven by practice that petroleum util is present in other structures in fact in practically all types of structure syn clines the opposite of anticlines anti clines for example are shunned with a feeling akin to horror and yet the guides to petroleum geology all say that if there is no water in the rock the oil will be found in the synclines syn clines in fact it can be taken as a rule that if the strata containing the oil is porous it ft id toward the synclines syn clines that the oil will surely move and it if the strata continue to be porous it will go in that direction until its migration is arr rested by some trap or by water if there is water in the syncline the oil of course being lighter will take its place on top and if there is a dome of the right structure and in the right position it furnishes an ideal place to tap the oil As to the narrower view of prospecting and estimating the supply of oil I 1 wish to quote from others the following is from an editorial by E degolyer on the estimating of petroleum reserves in economic geology jan uary february 1922 eminent and able geologists of national reputation have issued warnings of the imminence of the exhaustion of our perol petroleum euni resources since the earliest days of the development of our production of that extremely important mineral the president of the mid continent oil and gas association in his open letter of july 14 1921 to the president of the united states fairly appraises the value of estimates as follows these estimates except as they apply to the immediate confines of the developed and producing lands are valueless one may guess but there is no worthy basis for an opinion much less an estimate of the petroleum reserves under lands predictions of the exhaustion of this count rys supply have been made for thirty years or more but year after year new fields have been discovered until today we have the largest production in our history this inability to accept the estimates of geologists at apar par is not confined to producers of petroleum the late franklin K lane in one of his reports as secretary of interior expresses himself with a distinction unintentional let us hope between geologists and honest men Rs as follows geologists have estimated asti mated and estimated and they do not differ widely for few give more than thirty years of life to the petroleum sands of this country if the present yield is insisted upon and yet there isi so much of mystery in the hiding of this strange subterranean liquid that honest men will not say but that it will become a permanent factor in the world of light heat arid power petroleum exhaustion estimating de golyer then shows how estimates of the past have proven to be wrong and he says further even if an exact estimate of the future production of the proven petroleum deposits of the united states N were V ere obtainable however an estimate of our entire petroleum resources would depend largely upon what is to be expected from fields yet undiscovered estimates of this unknown quantity which have been made in the past are being made at present and willbe will be made in the future are but guess work and to my mind their making is a futile performance there is not enough exact data available to any man or group of men to give even a flavor of scientific accuracy to the estimates no one realizes the weakness of these so called estimates better than the geologists who made them it is a pity that we should have this weakness and the limitations of our ability to make inake estimates emphasized by the be industry and that our overindulgence over indulgence in the ages old pastime of prophecy making should give further grounds for suspicion to the very considerable I 1 group of oil operators who have ali alaways ways doubted that any good could come to the industry from geology or geologists in economic geology for march april 1922 A C veach further discusses the estimation of petroleum reserves he says petroleum is set apart in two respects from other minerals in no other mineral does the operator as a matter of everyday practice go forth blissfully to develop by drilling hitherto unknown deposits lying far beneath the surface the other and more important difference is that pert oleum occupies a paradoxical position among 6 minerals in the respect that new discoveries new researches and new developments have tended to increase rather than decrease the possibilities of its occurrence in hitherto unsuspected regions in the early oil development in the united states the trenton rock was regarded in certain regions b as the only possible source of oil subsequent developments showed that large areas which had been condemned because the trenton rock was beyond commercial drilling depth contained important deposits in beds younger than the trenton in the same manner it was said by scientists of high standing that the region which later became the great california oil fields could not yield oil in commercial quantities because the strata were too young too broken and too intimately associated with volcanic rocks rocks la L a in other minerals the increase of exact information has resulted in defining and limiting the condition under which they may occur the mere finding 6 of fossils of one of several different ages today justifies the statement no coal occurs in these beds on the contrary the growth of knowledge with respect to oil has been to progressively extend its known range through rocks of different ages and to multiply the variety of conditions under which it may inay occur in commercial quantities to mention only one example that varies from the first pseudo deduction it is natural to consider that because of the fluid character of petroleum intricate faulting would be fatal to its occurrence in commercial quantities but it has been demonstrated that the fundamental condition in two important oil fields is a very complicated system of relatively small fault blocks it is also true that oil in commercial quantities may be found in sedimentary rocks of any age from the oldest to the youngest and in a constantly increasing variety of structural conditions p the aggregate area of all the actually producing oil acreage of the |