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M.A. Kirschbaum

Publications and source records attributed to M.A. Kirschbaum.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2007

Chapter 3: Geologic Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources in the Phosphoria Total Petroleum System of the Wind River Basin Province, Wyoming

The Phosphoria Total Petroleum System (TPS) encompasses the entire Wind River Basin Province, an area of 4.7 million acres in central Wyoming. The source rocks most likely are black, organic-rich shales of the Meade Peak and Retort Phosphatic Shale Members of the Permian Phosphoria Formation located in the Wyoming and Idaho thrust belt to the west and southwest of the province. Petroleum was generated and expelled during Jurassic and Cretaceous time in westernmost Wyoming and is interpreted to have migrated into the province through carrier beds of the Pennsylvanian Tensleep Sandstone where it was preserved in hypothesized regional stratigraphic traps in the Tensleep and Permian Park City Formation. Secondary migration occurred during the development of structural traps associated with the Laramide orogeny. The main reservoirs are in the Tensleep Sandstone and Park City Formation and minor reservoirs are in the Mississippian Madison Limestone, Mississippian-Pennsylvanian Amsden Formation, Triassic Chugwater Group, and Jurassic Nugget Sandstone and Sundance Formation. The traps are sealed by shale or evaporite beds of the Park City, Amsden, and Triassic Dinwoody Formations, Triassic Chugwater Group, and Jurassic Gypsum Spring Formation. A single conventional oil and gas assessment unit (AU), the Tensleep-Park City AU, was defined for the Phosphoria TPS. Both the AU and TPS cover the entire Wind River Basin Province. Oil is produced from 18 anticlinal fields, the last of which was discovered in 1957, and the possibility of discovering new structural oil accumulations is considered to be relatively low. Nonassociated gas is produced from only two fields, but may be underexplored in the province. The discovery of new gas is more promising, but will be from deep structures. The bulk of new oil and gas accumulations is dependent on the discovery of hypothesized stratigraphic traps in isolated carbonate reservoirs of the Park City Formation. Mean resource estimates for the Tensleep-Park City Conventional Oil and Gas AU total 18 million barrels of oil, 294 billion cubic feet of gas, and 5.9 million barrels of natural gas liquids.

Data Series↗
USGS2006

Controls on the accumulation of coal and on the development of anastomosed fluvial systems in the Cretaceous Dakota Formation of southern Utah

Alluvial strata of the Cretaceous Dakota Formation of southern Utah are part of a transgressive systems tract associated with a foreland basin developed adjacent to the Sevier orogenic belt. These strata contain valley fill deposits, anastomosed channel systems and widespread coals. The coals constitute a relatively minor part of the Dakota Formation in terms of sediment volume, but may represent a substantial amount of the time represented by the formation. The coals are separated by clastic units up to 20 m thick. The stratigraphically lowest clastic unit of the Dakota Formation lies above an unconformity cut into Jurassic rocks. Incised valleys associated with the unconformity are up to 12 m deep. Two discrete episodes of valley fill sedimentation are recognized, including a lower sandstone unit with conglomerate layers, and an upper, discontinuous, coal-bearing unit. After the valleys filled, the area became one of low relief where extensive mires formed. Peat accumulation was interrupted at least three times by deposition of clastic sediment derived from the west. The clastic units consist of sandstone, mudstone or heterolithic ribbon bodies, stacked tabular sandstones, and laminated mudstones, and contain minor coal beds less than 0·35 m thick. Ribbon bodies are 1–9 m thick and 15–160 m wide, have pronounced basal scours, and are filled with both lateral and vertical accretion deposits. An anastomosed channel complex is suggested by the large number of coeval channels of varying dimensions, the variation in the structure and grain size of channel fills, and the presence of abundant tabular sandstones interpreted as crevasse splays. Although some sandstone bodies have well developed lateral accretion surfaces, the overall ribbon geometry indicates that mature meandering streams were not well developed. This is in contrast to modern anastomosed systems, which are commonly thought to be a transitional morphology caused by avulsion of a meander belt to a new position on its floodplain. Rather than being a transitional channel pattern related to river avulsion, the anastomosed channels of the Dakota Formation may have formed part of a large inland delta that episodically invaded widespread mires. The mires developed during periods when clastic influx was reduced either by high rates of subsidence close to the thrust belt or by deflection of rivers by emergent thrusts.

Utah↗
USGS2002

Stratigraphy of the Upper Cretaceous Mancos Shale (upper part) and Mesaverde Group in the southern part of the Uinta and Piceance basins, Utah and Colorado

Cross section A–A' was constructed in support of the oil and gas assessments of the Mesaverde and Mancos/Mowry Total Petroleum Systems in the Uinta and Piceance Basins of Utah and Colorado (fig. 1) (U.S. Geological Survey Uinta-Piceance Province Assessment Team, in press). This citation is referred to henceforth as simply “USGS, in press.” The Mesaverde Total Petroleum System contains continuous gas derived primarily from carbonaceous shale and coal in the Mesaverde Group [chapter by Johnson and Roberts in USGS (in press)]. The Mancos/Mowry Total Petroleum System contains continuous gas derived primarily from marine source rocks in the Mancos and Mowry Shales [chapter by Kirschbaum in USGS (in press)]. Cross section A–A' illustrates the stratigraphy of these Upper Cretaceous rocks, emphasizing the fluvial, coal-bearing coastal plain, nearshore marine, and offshore marine strata. The cross section is presented as a hard copy in this report and as a chapter by Hettinger and Kirschbaum (USGS, in press).

Colorado, Utah↗
USGS1996

Assessing the coal resources of the United States

In 1994, coal production in the United States reached the highest level in history (slightly more than 909 million metric tons or one billion short tons), continuing the upward trend of coal production and utilization that began 34 years ago. Previous assessments of the coal resources of the United States, which were completed as early as 1909, clearly indicated that the total coal resources of the Nation are large and that utilization at the current rate will not soon deplete them.

Fact Sheet↗
USGS1996

Preliminary investigation of the distribution and resources of coal in the Kaiparowits Plateau, southern Utah

This report on the coal resources of the Kaiparowits Plateau, Utah is a contribution to the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) 'National Coal Resource Assessment' (NCRA), a five year effort to identify and characterize the coal beds and coal zones that could potentially provide the fuel for the Nation's coal-derived energy during the first quarter of the twenty-first century. For purposes of the NCRA study, the Nation is divided into regions. Teams of geoscientists, knowledgeable about each region, are developing the data bases and assessing the coal within each region. The five major coal-producing regions of the United States under investigation are: (1) the Appalachian Basin; (2) the Illinois Basin; (3) the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Plain; (4) the Powder River Basin and the Northern Great Plains; and (5) the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. Six areas containing coal deposits in the Rocky Mountain and Colorado Plateau Region have been designated as high priority because of their potential for development. This report on the coal resources of the Kaiparowits Plateau is the first of the six to be completed. The coal quantities reported in this study are entirely 'resources' and represent, as accurately as the data allow, all the coal in the ground in beds greater than one foot thick. These resources are qualified and subdivided by thickness of coal beds, depth to the coal, distance from known data points, and inclination (dip) of the beds. The USGS has not attempted to estimate coal 'reserves' for this region. Reserves are that subset of the resource that could be economically produced at the present time. The coal resources are differentiated into 'identified' and 'hypothetical' following the standard classification system of the USGS (Wood and others, 1983). Identified resources are those within three miles of a measured thickness value, and hypothetical resources are further than three miles from a data point. Coal beds in the Kaiparowits Plateau are laterally discontinuous relative to many other coal bearing regions of the United States. That is, they end more abruptly and are more likely to fragment or split into thinner beds. Because of these characteristics, the data from approximately 160 drill holes and 40 measured sections available for use in this study are not sufficient to determine what proportion of the resources is technologically and economically recoverable. The Kaiparowits Plateau contains an original resource of 62 billion short tons of coal in the ground. Original resource is defined to include all coal beds greater than one foot thick in the area studied. None of the resource is recoverable by surface mining. However, the total resource figure must be regarded with caution because it does not reflect geologic, technological, land-use, and environmental restrictions that may affect the availability and the recoverability of the coal. At least 32 billion tons of coal are unlikely to be mined in the foreseeable future because the coal beds are either too deep, too thin to mine, inclined at more than 12?, or in beds that are too thick to be completely recovered in underground mining. The estimated balance of 30 billion tons of coal resources does not reflect land use or environmental restrictions, does not account for coal that would be bypassed due to mining of adjacent coal beds, does not consider the amount of coal that must remain in the ground for roof support, and does not take into consideration the continuity of beds for mining. Although all of these factors will reduce the amount of coal that could be recovered, there is not sufficient data available to estimate recoverable coal resources. For purposes of comparison, studies of coal resources in the eastern United States have determined that less than 10 percent of the original coal resource, in the areas studied, could be mined economically at today's prices (Rohrbacher and others, 1994).

Open-File Report↗
USGS1996

Preliminary investigations of the distribution and resources of coal in the Kaiparowits Plateau, southern Utah

This report on the coal resources of the Kaiparowits Plateau, Utah is a contribution to the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) “National Coal Resource Assessment” (NCRA), a five year effort to identify and characterize the coal beds and coal zones that could potentially provide the fuel for the Nation’s coal-derived energy during the first quarter of the twenty-first century. For purposes of the NCRA study, the Nation is divided into regions. Teams of geoscientists, knowledgeable about each region, are developing the data bases and assessing the coal within each region. The five major coal-producing regions of the United States under investigation are: (1) the Appalachian Basin; (2) the Illinois Basin; (3) the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Plain; (4) the Powder River Basin and the Northern Great Plains; and (5) the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. Six areas containing coal deposits in the Rocky Mountain and Colorado Plateau Region have been designated as high priority because of their potential for development. This report on the coal resources of the Kaiparowits Plateau is the first of the six to be completed.

Utah↗
USGS1988

Geologic history and palynologic dating of Paleocene deposits, western Rock Springs uplift, Sweetwater County, Wyoming

During the latest Cretaceous or earliest Paleocene, a northwest-southeast trending anticline developed in the area of the present Rock springs uplift in southwestern Wyoming. This ancestral structure was eroded to a surface of fairly low relief on which a paleosol developed. The surface was formed on the Upper Cretaceous Almond Formation throughout the study area. In the early middle Paleocene (P3 palynomorph zone), topographic lows on the erosion surface were infilled by alluvial deposits that accumulated in channel, floodplain, and backswamp environments. An organic-rich facies contains numerous coal beds and is middle to late Paleocene in age (P3 to P5 zones). The assemblage of pollen that defines the late middle Paleocene (P4 zone) is absent from the area suggesting a hiatus, although no lithologic break was observed at this boundary. The younger organic-poor facies begins in the late Paleocene (P5 zone) and continues to the top of the studied sequence. This change in facies has been used to map the contact between the Fort Union Formation of Paleocene age in this area, and the Wasatch Formation which was though to be of Eocene age. This study demonstrates that, as currently mapped, the lower part of the Wasatch Formation is Paleocene in age. Stratigraphically higher parts of the Wasatch, which presumably contain rocks of latest Paleocene (P6 zone) and earliest Eocene age, were not studied. -Authors

Contributions to Geology - University of Wyoming, ↗