Salt Creek Oil Field

Dutch Well No. 1, 1908, in Salt Creek Oil Field[1]

The Salt Creek Oil Field, is located in Natrona County, Wyoming.[2] By 1970, more oil had been produced by this field than any other in the Rocky Mountains region and accounted for 20 percent of the total production in Wyoming.[3]

Petroleum seeps in the area were known before 1880, but oil strikes near Lander led to claims by Schoonmaker and Iba.[4] In 1889 the first well to strike oil was drilled in the Shannon pool by P.M. Shannon, president of the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Company, who in 1895 built an oil refinery in Casper to process the oil.[5] Dr. Porro, an Italian geologist working for the Dutch company Petroleum Maatschappij Salt Creek in 1906, located the Dutch No. 1 near a large oil seep south of the Shannon wells, which was drilled in 1908.[6] The "gusher" well reached an oil sand after drilling through 1,000 feet (300 m) of shale.[7]

In 1915, a portion of the Teapot Dome was made Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 3.[8]

Geology

The field is on an anticline with 1,500 feet (460 m) of closure, which formed in the Late Cretaceous or Early Tertiary.[3] The anticline has two distinct domes, the "Salt Creek Dome" to the north and the "Teapot Dome" to the south.[9] Production is from stratigraphic traps in the Lakota, Sundance and Tensleep formations plus two Frontier Formations, which is an offshore bar sandstone, all of which are interbedded with marine shales.[3] This second Frontier formation extends into the Teapot Dome to the south.[10] The Frontier lies between the Mowry Shale and Niobrara Formation.[3]

  1. ^ Wegemann, p. 13
  2. ^ Wegemann, Plate III
  3. ^ E/MJ, Engineering and Mining Journal (Public domain ed.). McGraw-Hill. 1896. p. 60. 

Notes

  1. Wegemann, Plate VII
  2. Wegemann, 1911, p. 37
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Barlow and Haun, p. 147
  4. Wegemann, pp.6-7
  5. Wegemann, p. 7
  6. Wegemann, 1911, pp. 72-73
  7. Wegemann, 1911, p. 73
  8. Wegemann, p. 9
  9. wegemann, p. 54
  10. Barlow and Haun, pp. 148-149

Bibliography

External links

CO2 Enhanced oil recovery

Coordinates: 43°23′14″N 106°22′49″W / 43.38722°N 106.38028°W