Cretaceous shallow drilling, US Western Interior: Core research. Technical progress report

• Main Author: Arthur, M.A.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: 02 PETROLEUM; 03 NATURAL GAS; 58 GEOSCIENCES; UTAH; PETROLEUM GEOLOGY; COLORADO; KANSAS; NUMERICAL DATA; PROGRESS REPORT; COORDINATED RESEARCH PROGRAMS; SOURCE ROCKS; DRILL CORES; CRETACEOUS PERIOD; STRATIGRAPHY; GEOCHEMISTRY; MINERALOGY; WELL LOGGING; US DOE; US GS; Arctic
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/10149031; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10149031; https://doi.org/10.2172/10149031

This project is a continuing multidisciplinary study of middle to Upper Cretaceous marine carbonate and clastic rocks in the Utah-Colorado-Kansas corridor of the old Cretaceous seaway that extended from the Gulf Coast to the Arctic during maximum Cretaceous transgressions. It is collaborative between in the US Geological Survey (W.E. Dean, P.I.) and University researchers led by The Pennsylvania State University(M.A. Arthur, P.I.) and funded by DOE and the USGS, in part. Research focusses on the Greenhom, Niobrara and lower Pierre Shale units and their equivalents, combining biostratigraphic/paleoecologic studies, inorganic, organic and stable isotopic geochemical studies, mineralogical investigations and high-resolution geophysical logging. This research requires unweathered samples and continuous smooth ``exposures`` in the form of cores from at least 4 relatively shallow reference holes (i.e. < 1000m) in transect from east to west across the basin. The major initial effort was recovery in Year 1 of the project of continuous cores from each site in the transect. This drilling provided samples and logs of strata ranging from pelagic sequences that contain organic-carbon-rich marine source rocks to nearshore coal-bearing units. This transect also will provide information on the extent of thermal maturation and migration of hydrocarbons in organic-carbon-rich strata along a burial gradient.