| Show future possibilities for petroleum in this region As viewed by well known oil geologist of wyoming by chas H henley petroleum geologist evanston wyo the most important development in southwestern wyoming southeastern idaho and a part of utah recently recently y is is the fact that the carboniferous series produces paraffin oil for no particular reason except precedent it was generally supposed that the pennsylvanian pennsylvania horizons would produce black oil here as they do elsewhere in wyoming the recent discovery that the production at la barge is pennsylvanian or older and the recent discovery of green oil in the pennsylvanian pennsylvania at cane creek in southeastern utah opens up a new field of vast possibilities for the country this came when we hardly knew where to look for more new fields in the united states more importance attaches to this for the reason that there are vast deposits of the and the type of folding is extremely favorable and the regions of folding are veritable empires it is now apparent that what brigham young said when he landed in salt lake valley is ap propos of this western mountain flank for the oil industry this is the place he said and this is the place regardless of the fact that utah has been a sore disappointment up to date vast sums spent in utah it would be difficult to estimate how much has been spent in id utah in futile efforts to find oil but it certainly runs into the millions deep wells have been sunk at san rafael sw swell ell woodside Aro odside cisco vernal duchesne san juan circle cliffs and green river all of these have been failures allures except san juan and cisco san rafael swell is quite surely a we had precedent on structure in the black hills baxter basin and porcupine woodside is just an outlier of san an rafael swell and the finding 7 of helium was proof of it apparently there was not elou enough gh folding t to 0 produce oil at C asco isco and vernal but we knew pretty well how much fold ing was required for cretaceous production for there had been en plenty of experience in wyoming san juan was a ice e little field in a synclinal basin and would continue so yet for that matter but the transportation and marketing problem lern cannot be solved in that district for anything small the 1 e new discovery of oil at cane creek is not an absolute commercial certainty as yet because of the problem of W salt southern utah produces paraffin caraffi n oil the e one important fact that this divulges is that the editor edl toiL As ar employee of the U S geological survey explains recently recent the y article mr of 0 the casper oil index which published this region renley H the rocky mountain in made many examinations ana alid later many mapped 6 tures when employed by private interests geologist s I 1 first r the of 1110 mountain etain having been one alco states to sinclair lr tl the left eft ie recently 06 ye he recen inhere the r port ort collins area 11 south crests holdings m to 0 join in fil ohp he k development af 0 personal w wyoming Wyom pennsylvanian series produce paraffin oil in that section southeastern utah is one large anticline fro from m price southward into arizona on the anticline ar are e a number of minor domes some of which are caused by intrusions some are caused by indru intrusions of salt from under surrounding areas where the overload is greater than that over the crest if the structures produce oil it will be one of the rare accidents of migration these have risen to such an immense height how however ever that hydrostatic pressure on the sands will more mode than likely be negative and the chance of finding commercial p production ro reduction is remote enough in the case of the cane creek structure enough salt has been reported to account for all the closure of the dome if these salt beds are now totally confined to the crest of the dome or in in other words if all the salt in the measure has flowed into the domal area then there is no doming of the beds underlying the salt measure I 1 so we have the problem there of bei being ng able to tell how deep the doming goes and of sorting out all of the maize of favorable looking structure and the location of oil traps and the task is not a superficial one for the topography is typically grand canyon topography and I 1 want to assure you that the country looks a whole lot rougher on a saddle horse than it does in a photograph some scientist may some day go in there and work it all out for the fun of it but the commercial inducement for a lot of it is not sufficient fici ent orderly arrangement of san juan folding of the folding on there is a very orderly arrangement this anticline in the old san juan district and there is no suggestions of salt there two structures which offer a lot of promise at this time are known and they are east anticline and the Hul kito the san juan river has cut a deep through both of these and the pennsylvanian beds gorge are exposed to nearly as great a depth as they have ever the sands exposed show considerable been explored by drilling sid erable saturation for want of hydrostatic pressure the synclinal basin between the two anticlines anti clines has gathered quite a considerable accumulation and was exploited as the san juan oil field ac for several years T this his basin will solve the fuel problem for the future development of th this is district wasatch range folding system the wasatch mot mountain etain range in in northern utah is in of parallel folds in the northern limits of reality a system idaho where compression was in wyoming a and nd this range of these less broken and many less intense the anticlines anti clines are are perfect structures most of them have risen to great height and the paleozoic beds are often exposed these beds offer considerable promise of commercial production oil springs occur at many places along their outcrop as well as from the several beds of the lower cretaceous the geologic history of the wasatch district differs radically from that east of the rocky mountains until the ae end of dakota time but during mowry and frontier time the deposits begin to come from common sources conditions on east side of wasatch the carlisle niobrara Nio brara and pierre in northeastern wyoming are very similar in their equivalents to the southwestern part of the state the strate graphic differences may be partly accounted for by the existence of an ancient barrier between the seas which lay east of the present rocky mountain range and those west of it this barrier has been named the paleo mountains by dr sam knigof of the university of wyoming and occupies about the same position as the present by the end of permian time only an occasional peak protruded through the de deposits p and any influence that this mountain system may have had on deposition was lost by the end of triassic the other cause of strat difference was a marked subsidence of the sea floor in the wasatch district which began in jurassic time and continued until the end of frontier As a result of these two conditions the wasatch district has rocks representative of every age from cambrian up to the middle eocene with but a single doubtful unconformity and from the beginning of the jurassic until the end of frontier time all the formations which have equivalents east of the are much thicker here and the continental deposits and unconformities there are represented by marine equivalents here this marked subsidence of a jurassic sea was the beginning of the greatest diastrophism and lasted the longest in this wasatch district of any of the rocky mountains in in the united states but the sedimentary deposits are of such great that the granites goranites gra are seldom exposed folding and faulting followed old lines of weakness until middle eocene and quite late in tertiary time the uinta mountains were lifted over a great intrusive which gave great mineral wealth to the district the green river beds are highly tilted in places and wherever they are crushed their sands carry oil movement may still be going on here for quite recently the shore line of old lake bonneville has been faulted in places speculations as to markets should southeastern utah prove to be a biz big producer prod acer that oil will more than likely go into the california and mid continent markets A natural pipe line gradient would follow the colorado river to the santa fe which serves large centers of population east and west whose business is largely to handle oil powerful boosting stations and a difficult railroad climb would be required to move any large quantity y northward to salt lake city as a refining center and the quality of the oil may prevent it from competing with the southeastern and sout southwestern hw estern markets through that route should the la barge and aspen districts and the remaining ma ining promising structures as yet unexploited prove to be productive they will be served by the oregon short line and the union pacific probably through salt lake as a refining point and the products marketed in the northwest southwest and east these oils are of excellent quality |
