OCR Text |
Show Geologist Says Inherent Facts Indicate Uintah Basin Oil Will Eventually Hank Utah As National Producer "Striking facts that two oil fields have already been opened in the Uintah Basin of Utah, and that nearly six million acres of land are yet barely scratched there, and that 33 or more 'pays' might underlie the area, lead to only one conclusion namely that the Uintah Basin is a large and important potential oil-producing area, which in the future should place Utah among the important oil-producing states of the nation," Dorsey Hager, consulting geologist, says in the latest issue of Oil Reporter Report-er magazine. The Basin, according to Mr. Hager, first attracted national attention when the Weber sandstone sand-stone at Rangely, CqIq., was developed, de-veloped, followed by the smaljer Ashley Valley oil field, also pro- ducing from the Weber formation. forma-tion. These strikes came in the wake of Ashley valley gas finds in the Dakota and the Morrison beds many years prior to the discovery of oil from the Weber sandstone. Following the deeper Ashley valley well came Carter Oil Co.'s Ute Tribal No. 1, a 1,600 bbl. well producing oil congealing congeal-ing at 90 degrees F. from a depth of 9,300 feet in Green River strata of Eocene age. Mr. Hager believes the recent reported showings of the California Cal-ifornia Co., near1 Gusher, may well prove productive, the results re-sults of which will be the development de-velopment of the area into a yery large field. The importance of these two welis lien in the fact that they occur near the deep of the Uintah Uin-tah Basin and that there are between 30 and 40 possible productive pro-ductive "pays" underlying the area, The youngest beds below the Quaternary are Oligocene in age. Thirty thousand feet should be a fairly accurate estimate of the depth of these beds. They ere probably thicker west of this section and thinner in the east, and possibly contain 33 to 41 pays. Even though it is not likely that any tests will be carried out to the full depth of 30,000 feet, the existence of a large number of possible gas and oil pays underneath the area encourages the idea that any one of them may prove productive at moderate depths, dependent upon the reaiy$ positions po-sitions pf tests in 'the Basiri. Of utmpst importance are the gilsonite dikes of the Uintah Basin. Their widespread occurence occur-ence is of unusual Interest, indicating in-dicating an extensive source of petroliferous material underlying1 underly-ing1 the Basin, Heavy asphaltic beds forming Asphalt ridge on the north side of the Uintah Basin occur at the Cretaceous Oligocene contact. Some geologists contend that the asphalt is secondary from oil sand that once outcropped in the mountains to the north and was washed into the Basin a fossil asphalt deposit. Two Carter Oil holes drilled just west of Asphalt ridge, where oil was found in beds above the contact, fail to support such a theory. A more localized origin shquld be sought Rrebably in the Upper Cretaceous or in the Basal Epcene beds. The outcrops of the Uintah, Green River, and Wasatch beds are impregnated with bituminous bitumin-ous material; and since the distribution dis-tribution seems widespread, the evidence i s clear that large volumes of oil have been formed. Surface folds in the Eocene beds are few and not too well defined most of them being' noses or faulted folds. Seismog-raphy Seismog-raphy surveys have, however, defined ,s o m e marked folds mostly of the plunging anticlinal anticlin-al or nose type with small closures. clos-ures. As yet there have not been sufficient test holes to determine deter-mine the reliability of seismic mapping, The surface beds on the north side of the Basin dip south until un-til the trough of the Basin is reached, while on the south flank of the Basin the beds dip north. On the edges of the Basin the Eocene beds lie unconform-ably unconform-ably on the underlying beds. Whether or not folding in the surface beds reflects the conformable con-formable folding underground is questionable. All these facts introduces in-troduces the possibilities of stra-tigraphis stra-tigraphis traps due to overlaps and unconformities and to lens-ing. lens-ing. Insufficient evidence exists to evaluate such conditions as more than guesses. Mr. Hager concludes that the mapping of possible new fields will depend largely on seismograph seismo-graph surveys to define subsurface sub-surface folding, as stratigraphic traps will only be defined by careful study of many test holes. |