Bulletin, Issue 702

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U.S. Government Printing Office, 1920 - Geology
 

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Page 51 - ... and white bands. The shale that yields the most oil when subjected to distillation is that which weathers into massive benches of grayish-blue color but which is dark brown to black on a freshly broken surface. After this tough rich shale, which appears to be without bedding planes or laminations, is heated and the oil driven off it crumbles easily and exhibits true shale structure. Where thin benches of rich shale are interbedded with lean or barren shale, the former being resistant, weathers...
Page 69 - Sec- ment ot this enormous reserve supply retary of the simply awaits the time when the price of gasoline or the demand for other distillation products warrants the utilization of this substitute source. This may happen in the future. At all events these shales are likely to be drawn upon long before the exhaustion of the petroleum fields.
Page 17 - ... Mesaverde in the vicinity of Emmons Cone, a few miles north of Superior. It appears from the well records and flowing wells at Rock Springs, Superior, Bitter Creek, and other points along the Union Pacific Railroad that water can be obtained in almost any part of the Rock Springs field, outside of the Baxter basin, by drilling to considerable depths. Whether the supply will be large enough to meet the full demand of a mining camp can be determined only by careful and systematic drilling. In many...
Page 67 - A study of the table reveals a fairly uniform quantity of products from the different samples, the gasoline ranging from 6 to 12 per cent., the kerosene from 28.5 to 49 per cent., the paraffin from 1.63 to 7.70 per cent., and the sulphur from 0.41 to 1.42 per cent. The samples for fractionation were chosen to illustrate both range in physical character of the shale and wide geographic distribution.
Page 69 - ... of gasoline may be extracted by ordinary methods of refining, and in Utah there is probably an equal amount of shale just as rich. The same shale in Colorado, in addition to the oil, should produce with but little added cost about 300,000,000 tons of ammonium sulphate, a compound especially valuable as a fertilizer. The industry requires a large equipment of retorts, condensers, and oil refineries, as well as of mining machinery, so that it cannot be profitably handled on a small scale.
Page 16 - Creek cuts three times across a pronounced hogback ridge 1,000 feet in height instead of following the softer shale along the strike of the beds. At the south end of the dome the streams do not cut directly across the major axis. Red Creek, on the west side, drains southward into Green River after cutting a channel through part of the Uinta uplift. On the east side of the axis Vermilion Creek drains southeastward, paralleling the Uinta uplift through the upper half of its course, and finally cuts...
Page 33 - Veatch, AC, Geography and geology of a portion of southwestern Wyoming: US Geol.
Page 36 - The minor east-west axis is approximately 50 miles long, extending across the dome in a direction north of east and south of west, passing north of Aspen Mountain and through a point 4 miles north of Black Buttes, a station on the Union Pacific Railroad. Several small anticlines and synclines are developed upon the main dome, but for the most part they are unimportant.
Page 13 - Within this field there are five distinct topographic districts, each presenting entirely different characteristics from those of its neighbor. Only the most prominent peaks and ridges that encircle the dome rise above the adjacent Tertiary escarpments. The divide between the Green River and Great Divide basins has no topographic identity or distinctness. It lies for the most part several miles east of the dome and is formed in some places of Tertiary rock, in others of Cretaceous rock, and in still...
Page 68 - ... and richness of the shales in different parts of the region. Very rough but cautious calculations of the contents of the shale in parts of the area examined indicate that the distillation of shale from beds over 3 feet thick in Colorado alone will yield more than 20,000,000,000 barrels of crude oil, from which more than 2,000,000,000 barrels of gasoline can be extracted by ordinary methods. A report giving the results of these explorations and tests and an account of experiments as to possible...

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