In November of 2012,
Jimmy Goolsby, the head of a geologic consulting firm, Goolsby, Finley and
Associates, based in Casper, Wyoming, gave a special presentation to an
audience that was a mix of oil and gas industry representatives, and members of
the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. He started off his talk to
this anxious crowd by stating “The Powder River Basin is going to be the best
basin in Wyoming for producing oil.” Jimmy Goolsby himself credits this revived
interest in Wyoming oil development with the research work being done at the
Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute at the University of Wyoming, which is helping
the industry find new techniques for pulling harder to recover oil out of the
ground.
Emerging oil and gas
exploration company, Innocent, Inc. has picked the right time to begin
development work on properties in the Wyoming Powder River Basin. When you look
at the side of an excavated mountain, you may see sometimes what are referred
to as ‘strata’ of rock. In other words, layers of sedimentary rock with
internal characteristics that distinguish it from other layers. A structural
basin is essentially an area of strata that has been warped over time by
shifting tectonic plates and has the appearance of an inverted dome. The Powder
River Basin is such a structural basin that is 120 miles East to West, and 200
miles north to south.
The Powder River
Basin is actually best known for its low sulfur ‘sub-bituminous’ coal, and 40%
of the billion tons of coal used in the United States comes from this region.
On the geological time scale, the Powder River Basin would be considered young.
About 60 million years ago, the basin floor was covered with swamps and lakes
and essentially had a subtropical climate. Trees and other organic matter began
building up on the basin floor and formed peat bogs under the fresh water.
Sediments would wash down from nearby mountains and cover the peat and after 25
million years, the area became arid. Eventually the continuous pressure
compressed the peat and formed coal. The low sulfur content is mainly due to
the formation under fresh water. Coal from the Appalachian mountain regions has
a much higher sulfur content because it was formed under ocean water. So for
comparison, anthracite coal from the Appalachian Mountains began formation over
250 million years ago, while there was only one supercontinent, Pangea. What we
know as the familiar shape of the North American continent, is only about 200
million years old, which is still young for an earth that is estimated to be
4.54 billion years old.
Most of the oil we
use is formed by biogenic formation as well in a process similar to that of
coal, and oil that was formed over the ‘younger’ time period of 60 million
years tends to have a number of defining characteristics. Oil that is easily
pumped up and the least viscous tends has formed over 100s of millions of years
ago, and is under rock that is non-permeable and tightly sealed. A common way
of defining that oil is by comparing how heavy or light that oil is to water,
and the standard is the American Petroleum Institute gravity or API gravity. If
the API gravity is greater than 10, the oil floats on water, and if less than
10, it is heavy oil that sinks in water. So the older oil tends to be light
crude and described as having a high API gravity. The oil formations in areas
such as the Powder River basin, are younger, have been under semi-permeable
rock, and bacteria over the centuries have caused biodegradation, leaving the
heavier hydrocarbons behind. The oil that Innocent, Inc. expects to extract
will have a low API gravity, meaning it will be a very heavy crude and will be
highly viscous. This means enhanced oil recovery techniques will have to be
used to literally force the oil out of the ground. Innocent Inc. is quite
prepared to utilize techniques such as gas, water, steam, or fire flooding to
extract the oil.
Last year, the
Powder River Basin was responsible for just over a third of Wyoming’s 60
million barrel output. Two oil companies, Anadarko Petroleum and Chesapeake
Energy, that have operations in the Powder River Basin both increased oil
production from that area. Innocent, Inc. is focusing on oil-bearing formations
that are only 2,500 feet from the surface, and are looking at other prospects
in the state of Wyoming as well. Innocent, Inc. is in the right region of the
United States to successfully execute its business plan.
For more information
on Innocent, visit: www.innocentinc.com
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