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]

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  Salt Creek Oil Field Stratigraphy^[1]

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  Shannon Oil Pool in Salt Creek Oil Field^[2]

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  Geological section of Salt Creek Oil Field^[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

Bibliography

• Barlow, J.A. Jr., and Haun, J.D., 1970, Regional Stratigraphy of Frontier Formation and Relation to Salt Creek Field, Wyoming, in Geology of Giant Petroleum Fields, Halbouty, M.T., editor, AAPG Memoir 14, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
• Wegemann, C.H., 1911, The Lander and Salt Creek Oil Fields, Wyoming, US Dept. of the Interior USGS Bulletin 452, Washington: Government Printing Office. (Public domain ed.)
• Wegemann, C.H., 1918, The Salt Creek Oil Field, Wyoming, US Dept. of the Interior USGS Bulletin 670, Washington: Government Printing Office. (Public domain ed.)

External links

CO2 Enhanced oil recovery

• CO2 Puts New Fizz in Old Field

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