Cretaceous shallow drilling, U.S. Western Interior: Core research. Final technical report

The primary objective of the project is to construct a subsurface transect of Cretaceous strata that were deposited in the Kansas-Colorado-Utah corridor, going from marine sequences that contain organic-carbon-rich hydrocarbon source rocks in Kansas and eastern Colorado to nearshore coal-bearing units in western Colorado and Utah. The drilling transect will provide continuous, unweathered samples for inorganic, organic, and isotopic geochemical studies and mineralogical investigations to determine the characteristics of hydrocarbon source rocks. 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. In addition, the eastern Colorado hole will provide characteristics of an important fractured reservoir (the Pierre Shale) in the Florence oil field, the oldest continuously producing field in the United States (>100 years; 600 wells; >14 Mbbls)