DEPOSITIONAL HISTORY AND SOURCE ROCK CHARACTERIZATION AT TEAPOT DOME, WYOMING

Teapot Dome oilfield near the town of Midwest, Wyoming has been the testing site of numerous drilling and production techniques since the early 1900’s. The structure is a doubly plunging basement-cored anticline that formed during the Laramide orogeny, covered with sediments ranging from Cambrian to Quaternary. Several prolific source rocks in the area charge reservoirs that are still producing today. Some of these have potential to be unconventional reservoirs. The goal of this research is to understand hydrocarbon generation in these formations and then be able to extrapolate the results to analog basins for future oil and gas exploration. Based on literature review of burial history, each organic rich zone will be fully modeled using PetroMod 1D. The geochemical data will be derived from previous core studies, new sample analysis using RockEval, well log analysis, and possibly micropaleontology. Properly modeling each formation of interest using all available data will determine the source maturity and expulsion rates.