Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.125
M. Longman
Just as the world’s population, knowledge in general, and the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG) have changed in major ways during the past 100 years, so too has the study and interpretation of carbonate rocks and reservoirs. The RMAG, a century old in 2022, has evolved from just 50 original charter members who held the organization’s first “meeting” in 1922, to its approximately 1800 members today. Thus, RMAG’s publications have helped document the evolution of carbonate rock studies, particularly those in the Rocky Mountain region. Key contributions have been made through RMAG’s hundreds of luncheon talks, through its quarterly technical publication, The Mountain Geologist, initiated in 1964, and the exceptionally comprehensive Geologic Atlas of the Rocky Mountain Region, published 50 years ago in 1972. In addition, since 1953 the RMAG has published field guides and symposia volumes focused on specific basins, types of reservoirs, and structural geology among other things. Many of these books contain papers focused on carbonate rock units in the Rockies. Analysis of the papers published in The Mountain Geologist each year from 1964 through 2021 reveals that a fairly consistent 10 to 15% of that journal’s articles each year deal directly with some aspect of carbonate rocks. Earlier papers in the 1960s and 1970s dealt mainly with outcrop studies and the correlation of specific carbonate units based on measured sections or the use of fossils to define facies and biostratigraphic units. During the 1980s emphasis shifted to refining carbonate depositional models and focusing more on carbonate diagenesis through detailed petrographic studies, isotopic analyses, cathodoluminescence, and scanning electron microscopy. The 1990s brought a shift to papers focused more on specific carbonate hydrocarbon reservoirs ranging from the peritidal dolomites in Cottonwood Creek Field to relatively deepwater Waulsortian mudmounds in the Mississippian Lodgepole Formation and the “basinal” chalks of the Niobrara Formation. The focus of carbonate studies shifted again in the early 2000s to the use of 3-D seismic data to better understand specific carbonate reservoirs and the increased interpretation of carbonate deposits within the context of sequence stratigraphy. The tools used to study carbonate rocks expanded even further over the past decade with more refined isotopic data, improved SEM studies, and the use of elemental data obtained with X-ray fluorescence analyses. No doubt the next decade will bring even more improvements in data collection methods and the interpretation of depositional and diagenetic processes that have impacted all Rocky Mountain carbonate deposits.
{"title":"Evolution of carbonate studies in the Rocky Mountain region over the past century","authors":"M. Longman","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.125","url":null,"abstract":"Just as the world’s population, knowledge in general, and the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG) have changed in major ways during the past 100 years, so too has the study and interpretation of carbonate rocks and reservoirs. The RMAG, a century old in 2022, has evolved from just 50 original charter members who held the organization’s first “meeting” in 1922, to its approximately 1800 members today. Thus, RMAG’s publications have helped document the evolution of carbonate rock studies, particularly those in the Rocky Mountain region. Key contributions have been made through RMAG’s hundreds of luncheon talks, through its quarterly technical publication, The Mountain Geologist, initiated in 1964, and the exceptionally comprehensive Geologic Atlas of the Rocky Mountain Region, published 50 years ago in 1972. In addition, since 1953 the RMAG has published field guides and symposia volumes focused on specific basins, types of reservoirs, and structural geology among other things. Many of these books contain papers focused on carbonate rock units in the Rockies. Analysis of the papers published in The Mountain Geologist each year from 1964 through 2021 reveals that a fairly consistent 10 to 15% of that journal’s articles each year deal directly with some aspect of carbonate rocks. Earlier papers in the 1960s and 1970s dealt mainly with outcrop studies and the correlation of specific carbonate units based on measured sections or the use of fossils to define facies and biostratigraphic units. During the 1980s emphasis shifted to refining carbonate depositional models and focusing more on carbonate diagenesis through detailed petrographic studies, isotopic analyses, cathodoluminescence, and scanning electron microscopy. The 1990s brought a shift to papers focused more on specific carbonate hydrocarbon reservoirs ranging from the peritidal dolomites in Cottonwood Creek Field to relatively deepwater Waulsortian mudmounds in the Mississippian Lodgepole Formation and the “basinal” chalks of the Niobrara Formation. The focus of carbonate studies shifted again in the early 2000s to the use of 3-D seismic data to better understand specific carbonate reservoirs and the increased interpretation of carbonate deposits within the context of sequence stratigraphy. The tools used to study carbonate rocks expanded even further over the past decade with more refined isotopic data, improved SEM studies, and the use of elemental data obtained with X-ray fluorescence analyses. No doubt the next decade will bring even more improvements in data collection methods and the interpretation of depositional and diagenetic processes that have impacted all Rocky Mountain carbonate deposits.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122795150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.251
K. Bogolub
Colorado has over a hundred years of history in seismic research and monitoring. It has experienced both unintentional and intentional induced seismicity, being one of the first places in which the phenomenon was observed. The state has had numerous tectonic earthquakes, the largest being a historical, estimated magnitude 6.6, that occurred in 1882. Being far away from tectonic plate boundaries, Colorado earthquakes are a unique window into the study of intraplate tectonics and continental rifting. Beginning with the earliest seismometer installed in the state in 1909, this article presents a history of Colorado seismic stations, earthquake activity, and active fault mapping.
{"title":"A brief history of notable Colorado seismicity and seismic stations","authors":"K. Bogolub","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.251","url":null,"abstract":"Colorado has over a hundred years of history in seismic research and monitoring. It has experienced both unintentional and intentional induced seismicity, being one of the first places in which the phenomenon was observed. The state has had numerous tectonic earthquakes, the largest being a historical, estimated magnitude 6.6, that occurred in 1882. Being far away from tectonic plate boundaries, Colorado earthquakes are a unique window into the study of intraplate tectonics and continental rifting. Beginning with the earliest seismometer installed in the state in 1909, this article presents a history of Colorado seismic stations, earthquake activity, and active fault mapping.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125053945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.261
Emily Erz
The original geologist toolkit includes: a hand lens, compass, rock hammer, writing instrument and a field notebook, paired with a love for the outdoors and the desire to understand the earth and the processes that shape it. Today, the latter part remains true, but the toolkit has innumerous variations that can provide multitudes of new information, by enhancing accuracy, altering perspectives, and offering completely new capabilities. It has been said that in the last 100 years humanity has entered a ‘technological renaissance.’ This rapid period of innovation and exploration includes a significant amount of observation equipment like digital cameras, global positioning systems (GPS), satellites, drones, and even smartphones. Widespread, accessible surveillance devices certainly pose a serious threat to privacy, but the ‘eye(s) in the sky’ can be used for good as well. The foundation of science is solid observation and geologists have many things to observe. Geologists work tirelessly to evaluate and mitigate geologic hazards such as floods, mass movements, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) also known as drones, can carry observatory equipment into the most dangerous or inaccessible places during and after these catastrophic events without compromising safety to gather data.
{"title":"Unmanned aerial systems, geology’s newest aerial technology","authors":"Emily Erz","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.261","url":null,"abstract":"The original geologist toolkit includes: a hand lens, compass, rock hammer, writing instrument and a field notebook, paired with a love for the outdoors and the desire to understand the earth and the processes that shape it. Today, the latter part remains true, but the toolkit has innumerous variations that can provide multitudes of new information, by enhancing accuracy, altering perspectives, and offering completely new capabilities. It has been said that in the last 100 years humanity has entered a ‘technological renaissance.’ This rapid period of innovation and exploration includes a significant amount of observation equipment like digital cameras, global positioning systems (GPS), satellites, drones, and even smartphones. Widespread, accessible surveillance devices certainly pose a serious threat to privacy, but the ‘eye(s) in the sky’ can be used for good as well. The foundation of science is solid observation and geologists have many things to observe. Geologists work tirelessly to evaluate and mitigate geologic hazards such as floods, mass movements, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) also known as drones, can carry observatory equipment into the most dangerous or inaccessible places during and after these catastrophic events without compromising safety to gather data.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124812666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.239
Courtney Beck Antolik, J. Pinkett, Morgan Horbatko
The Cretaceous-Tertiary strata of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin have long been a source of natural resources, including coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal mining and oil drilling have been ongoing in the basin for more than a century. Coal mining started in the late 1800s, and today, Wyoming is the largest coal-producing state in the U.S. A coalbed methane boom-and-bust cycle in the 2000s left tens of thousands of wells idle or abandoned. Historical oil production has been largely from vertical wells in the Minnelusa/Tensleep, Muddy, Frontier/Turner, Shannon, Sussex, Parkman, and Teapot Formations. More recently, interest in unconventional source-rock reservoirs like the Mowry Shale and Niobrara Formation has grown in tandem with directional and horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology. Interest was so explosive that the state of Wyoming imposed new permitting regulations to keep activity under control. Like a bellwether for the energy industry, Wyoming has seen it all, from boom-and-bust cycles to fracking to carbon capture.
{"title":"The Powder River Basin: A persistent player in Wyoming’s energy landscape","authors":"Courtney Beck Antolik, J. Pinkett, Morgan Horbatko","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.239","url":null,"abstract":"The Cretaceous-Tertiary strata of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin have long been a source of natural resources, including coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal mining and oil drilling have been ongoing in the basin for more than a century. Coal mining started in the late 1800s, and today, Wyoming is the largest coal-producing state in the U.S. A coalbed methane boom-and-bust cycle in the 2000s left tens of thousands of wells idle or abandoned. Historical oil production has been largely from vertical wells in the Minnelusa/Tensleep, Muddy, Frontier/Turner, Shannon, Sussex, Parkman, and Teapot Formations. More recently, interest in unconventional source-rock reservoirs like the Mowry Shale and Niobrara Formation has grown in tandem with directional and horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology. Interest was so explosive that the state of Wyoming imposed new permitting regulations to keep activity under control. Like a bellwether for the energy industry, Wyoming has seen it all, from boom-and-bust cycles to fracking to carbon capture.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124822465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.229
D. McGrath
From Native Americans to glacier tourists to modern scientists, glaciers have long held a special place in the history of Colorado. While the state may not hold the same vivid examples of prior glaciations as Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes (kettle lakes) or New York’s Long Island (a terminal moraine), a more critical eye reveals the imprints of glaciers across the state, including spectacular moraines in Rocky Mountain National Park, chaotic deposits of glacial lake outburst floods in the Upper Arkansas Valley, and even today, a few small cirque glaciers in the highest reaches of the state. Here, I briefly outline prior studies that have examined these small modern glaciers and provide details on ongoing work to better understand recent changes and future prospects.
{"title":"Blowing in the wind: The glaciers of Colorado","authors":"D. McGrath","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.229","url":null,"abstract":"From Native Americans to glacier tourists to modern scientists, glaciers have long held a special place in the history of Colorado. While the state may not hold the same vivid examples of prior glaciations as Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes (kettle lakes) or New York’s Long Island (a terminal moraine), a more critical eye reveals the imprints of glaciers across the state, including spectacular moraines in Rocky Mountain National Park, chaotic deposits of glacial lake outburst floods in the Upper Arkansas Valley, and even today, a few small cirque glaciers in the highest reaches of the state. Here, I briefly outline prior studies that have examined these small modern glaciers and provide details on ongoing work to better understand recent changes and future prospects.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128517489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.201
D. Jarvie
The Williston Basin has proven to be a global super basin in terms of oil production and reserves (Sonnenberg, 2020). Although recent production in the basin has been dominated by the Middle Member of the Bakken Formation, the Madison Group has yielded over a billion barrels of oil since 1951. The Madison Group consists of the Charles, Mission Canyon, and Lodgepole formations with various members in each. These formations are found in both the United States and Canada and led Williston Basin production until 2008. As with many petroleum plays, the Williston Basin enticed oil men for many decades with the prospect of oil before finally yielding to success. Success, which is so often accompanied by a bit of good fortune, is a matter of finances, persistence, and technology, ultimately paving the way to successful commercial wells. Many factors contributed to the ongoing production results in the basin and include seismic, horizontal drilling, and completion technologies, and of course, good geological assessments. The history of production in the basin is also detailed by the history of petroleum geochemistry. Source rock and oil geochemistry progressed from scratch tests, test tube pyrolysis, and standard physicochemical properties, such as API gravity, to detailed chemical investigations including high resolution gas chromatography and biomarker analysis.
{"title":"The history of Madison Group exploration and production in the North Dakota Williston Basin with an update on Madison Group source rocks","authors":"D. Jarvie","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.201","url":null,"abstract":"The Williston Basin has proven to be a global super basin in terms of oil production and reserves (Sonnenberg, 2020). Although recent production in the basin has been dominated by the Middle Member of the Bakken Formation, the Madison Group has yielded over a billion barrels of oil since 1951. The Madison Group consists of the Charles, Mission Canyon, and Lodgepole formations with various members in each. These formations are found in both the United States and Canada and led Williston Basin production until 2008. As with many petroleum plays, the Williston Basin enticed oil men for many decades with the prospect of oil before finally yielding to success. Success, which is so often accompanied by a bit of good fortune, is a matter of finances, persistence, and technology, ultimately paving the way to successful commercial wells. Many factors contributed to the ongoing production results in the basin and include seismic, horizontal drilling, and completion technologies, and of course, good geological assessments. The history of production in the basin is also detailed by the history of petroleum geochemistry. Source rock and oil geochemistry progressed from scratch tests, test tube pyrolysis, and standard physicochemical properties, such as API gravity, to detailed chemical investigations including high resolution gas chromatography and biomarker analysis.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114326397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.145
R. Topper
The impact of climate change, particularly in the semi-arid west, has created unprecedented challenges in maintaining a reliable water supply. The water levels in the two largest reservoirs in the U.S., Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are at historic low levels. Any further declines in their capacity also jeopardizes them as the largest producers of hydroelectric power in the southwestern U.S. These reservoirs are critical components of the Colorado River Compact that dictates water deliveries and obligations of all states in the basin. As Colorado is the headwater state, reduced flows in the Colorado River will have cascading ramifications to the rest of Colorado’s water supplies. Over 80% of Colorado’s water use is sourced from surface water in seven major river basins. Consequently, reservoir storage is a critical infrastructure component in managing this resource. The west slope contains 70% of the state’s surface water though only 11% of its population. This imbalance creates greater demands for moving west slope water to the Front Range metropolitan areas. Colorado also contains vast groundwater resources in numerous and varied aquifers across the state. Groundwater is mostly used for domestic water supply and supplies water to approximately 20% of the state’s population. Colorado’s groundwater resources are a vital and an under-utilized piece of the state’s water portfolio. Sustainable development of these resources for beneficial use could relieve some pressure on the state’s river systems particularly during drought cycles. Colorado’s alluvial and sedimentary bedrock aquifers also have a tremendous capacity to store more water. Aquifers offer natural capital infrastructure with storage, transmission, and treatment capabilities. Most importantly, storing water underground avoids the massive evaporation losses inherent in surface water reservoirs. The Colorado Water Plan focuses on a measurable objective for future water storage that includes groundwater through implementation of innovative technologies such as managed aquifer recharge. The state has sponsored a number of studies that have identified tens to hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of storage capacity in various aquifers. Unfortunately, the state has only recently promulgated rules and regulations for recharge and extraction in nontributary aquifers outside of the administrative Denver Basin. While a number of metropolitan water districts are exploring or implementing aquifer storage and recovery projects in the Denver Basin, no such operations have been implemented on the western slope. The current water supply situation presents a tremendous opportunity for hydrogeologists to identify and characterize suitable aquifers throughout the state for both water supply and storage.
{"title":"Colorado’s groundwater reservoirs–-An underutilized resource","authors":"R. Topper","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.145","url":null,"abstract":"The impact of climate change, particularly in the semi-arid west, has created unprecedented challenges in maintaining a reliable water supply. The water levels in the two largest reservoirs in the U.S., Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are at historic low levels. Any further declines in their capacity also jeopardizes them as the largest producers of hydroelectric power in the southwestern U.S. These reservoirs are critical components of the Colorado River Compact that dictates water deliveries and obligations of all states in the basin. As Colorado is the headwater state, reduced flows in the Colorado River will have cascading ramifications to the rest of Colorado’s water supplies. Over 80% of Colorado’s water use is sourced from surface water in seven major river basins. Consequently, reservoir storage is a critical infrastructure component in managing this resource. The west slope contains 70% of the state’s surface water though only 11% of its population. This imbalance creates greater demands for moving west slope water to the Front Range metropolitan areas. Colorado also contains vast groundwater resources in numerous and varied aquifers across the state. Groundwater is mostly used for domestic water supply and supplies water to approximately 20% of the state’s population. Colorado’s groundwater resources are a vital and an under-utilized piece of the state’s water portfolio. Sustainable development of these resources for beneficial use could relieve some pressure on the state’s river systems particularly during drought cycles. Colorado’s alluvial and sedimentary bedrock aquifers also have a tremendous capacity to store more water. Aquifers offer natural capital infrastructure with storage, transmission, and treatment capabilities. Most importantly, storing water underground avoids the massive evaporation losses inherent in surface water reservoirs. The Colorado Water Plan focuses on a measurable objective for future water storage that includes groundwater through implementation of innovative technologies such as managed aquifer recharge. The state has sponsored a number of studies that have identified tens to hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of storage capacity in various aquifers. Unfortunately, the state has only recently promulgated rules and regulations for recharge and extraction in nontributary aquifers outside of the administrative Denver Basin. While a number of metropolitan water districts are exploring or implementing aquifer storage and recovery projects in the Denver Basin, no such operations have been implemented on the western slope. The current water supply situation presents a tremendous opportunity for hydrogeologists to identify and characterize suitable aquifers throughout the state for both water supply and storage.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132289005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.183
Megan R. M. Brown
Injection-induced seismicity has a long history in Colorado and one that is directly tied to the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG) and The Mountain Geologist. Two foundational cases of injection-induced seismicity are the Denver earthquakes from 1962 to 1968, caused by injection at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado, and the Rangely experiment that took place in the Rangely oil field, Colorado from 1969 to 1974. The deep disposal well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal disposed of hazardous waste associated with chemical weapons and chemical production. Shortly after injection began, earthquakes commenced in an area that had not witnessed an earthquake in almost 100 years. The Denver earthquakes ranged in magnitudes up to a M5.3 that occurred after injection had ceased at the disposal well. The lessons learned during this instance of injection-induced seismicity were taken to Rangely to conduct experiments on controlling earthquakes through the perturbation of pore fluid pressure. The USGS conducted the Rangely experiment by alternating periods of injection and pumping in four wells within the Rangely oil field. Seismicity and pore pressure were monitored throughout the experiment to determine whether the changes of fluid pressure could control the earthquakes. They found that the Hubbert-Rubey principle, described in 1959, did account for injection-induced seismicity and that earthquakes could be controlled through pore pressure manipulation. The research associated with these cases is the foundation on which all later injection-induced seismicity research rests. The 100-year anniversary of RMAG is an appropriate time to revisit these cases, the original research, and the studies that have followed.
{"title":"The beginning of the beginning–-Foundations of injection-induced seismicity","authors":"Megan R. M. Brown","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.183","url":null,"abstract":"Injection-induced seismicity has a long history in Colorado and one that is directly tied to the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG) and The Mountain Geologist. Two foundational cases of injection-induced seismicity are the Denver earthquakes from 1962 to 1968, caused by injection at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado, and the Rangely experiment that took place in the Rangely oil field, Colorado from 1969 to 1974. The deep disposal well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal disposed of hazardous waste associated with chemical weapons and chemical production. Shortly after injection began, earthquakes commenced in an area that had not witnessed an earthquake in almost 100 years. The Denver earthquakes ranged in magnitudes up to a M5.3 that occurred after injection had ceased at the disposal well. The lessons learned during this instance of injection-induced seismicity were taken to Rangely to conduct experiments on controlling earthquakes through the perturbation of pore fluid pressure. The USGS conducted the Rangely experiment by alternating periods of injection and pumping in four wells within the Rangely oil field. Seismicity and pore pressure were monitored throughout the experiment to determine whether the changes of fluid pressure could control the earthquakes. They found that the Hubbert-Rubey principle, described in 1959, did account for injection-induced seismicity and that earthquakes could be controlled through pore pressure manipulation. The research associated with these cases is the foundation on which all later injection-induced seismicity research rests. The 100-year anniversary of RMAG is an appropriate time to revisit these cases, the original research, and the studies that have followed.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134338839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.159
S. Sonnenberg
Resource plays are areas of large known hydrocarbon resources in-place and their recognition and development has evolved greatly in just the past few decades. The phrase ‘continuous accumulation’ is used somewhat interchangeably with resource play. Resource plays can be subdivided into those containing coalbed methane, tight gas, tight oil, fractured shale and chalk plays, and shallow biogenic gas reservoirs. These types of plays have mostly replaced convention oil and gas exploration since the 1990s. The production associated with resource plays has now reached more than 50% of the total U.S. production for both oil and gas. Continuous accumulations are technology driven and product price dependent. Technology innovations unlock reserves and drive development costs down making field development more economic. The power of these plays can be seen in company’s stock valuations and also in the merger and acquisition side of the oil and gas business. Top dollars are paid for companies that are in resource plays with undrilled locations, either as step outs or infills. In addition, resource plays have greatly contributed to technology improvements in areas such as drilling, completions, fracture stimulation, mud motors, drill bits, and pad drilling. The production associated with resource plays is so significant that it can impact oil and gas prices.
{"title":"The relatively recent development of resource plays in the Rocky Mountain region","authors":"S. Sonnenberg","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.159","url":null,"abstract":"Resource plays are areas of large known hydrocarbon resources in-place and their recognition and development has evolved greatly in just the past few decades. The phrase ‘continuous accumulation’ is used somewhat interchangeably with resource play. Resource plays can be subdivided into those containing coalbed methane, tight gas, tight oil, fractured shale and chalk plays, and shallow biogenic gas reservoirs. These types of plays have mostly replaced convention oil and gas exploration since the 1990s. The production associated with resource plays has now reached more than 50% of the total U.S. production for both oil and gas. Continuous accumulations are technology driven and product price dependent. Technology innovations unlock reserves and drive development costs down making field development more economic. The power of these plays can be seen in company’s stock valuations and also in the merger and acquisition side of the oil and gas business. Top dollars are paid for companies that are in resource plays with undrilled locations, either as step outs or infills. In addition, resource plays have greatly contributed to technology improvements in areas such as drilling, completions, fracture stimulation, mud motors, drill bits, and pad drilling. The production associated with resource plays is so significant that it can impact oil and gas prices.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122448526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-15DOI: 10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.93
J. Hagadorn
Science is a verb. Its approach, the scientific method, brings us closer to understanding nature through discovery and hypothesis testing. In most deep-time and deep-Earth science, complete understanding is unachievable. Fortunately, we move closer to it with each new generation of scientists, creating frameworks of knowledge that evolve with ever-more-refined observations, interpretations, and hypotheses. The field of paleontology epitomizes this phenomenon, and its evolution is intimately tied to fossils and strata of the Rocky Mountains. Using examples from the American West, the ensuing article highlights how a field anchored in the archaic has a very bright future—because paleontology has grown to help our community answer Earth-science questions spanning tectonics, climate, the evolutionary history of life, and beyond.
{"title":"Rocky Mountain paleontology: Digging the past with an eye to the future","authors":"J. Hagadorn","doi":"10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.93","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31582/rmag.mg.59.3.93","url":null,"abstract":"Science is a verb. Its approach, the scientific method, brings us closer to understanding nature through discovery and hypothesis testing. In most deep-time and deep-Earth science, complete understanding is unachievable. Fortunately, we move closer to it with each new generation of scientists, creating frameworks of knowledge that evolve with ever-more-refined observations, interpretations, and hypotheses. The field of paleontology epitomizes this phenomenon, and its evolution is intimately tied to fossils and strata of the Rocky Mountains. Using examples from the American West, the ensuing article highlights how a field anchored in the archaic has a very bright future—because paleontology has grown to help our community answer Earth-science questions spanning tectonics, climate, the evolutionary history of life, and beyond.","PeriodicalId":101513,"journal":{"name":"Mountain Geologist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116345203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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