This legacy database lists occurrences of minerals identified in the Green River Formation in the Uinta and Piceance Basins, Utah and Colorado using X-ray diffraction (XRD). The database was compiled from data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and former U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM). The database includes 1200 samples from 14 cores in...

Outside Publication: Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta
Rhenium–osmium (Re–Os) geochronology of marine petroleum systems has allowed the determination of the depositional age of source rocks as well as the timing of petroleum generation. In addition, Os isotopes have been applied as a fingerprinting tool to correlate oil to its source unit. To date, only classic marine petroleum systems have been studied...

USGS Publication: Open-File Report 2014–1059
The spatial and stratigraphic distribution of water in oil shale of the Eocene Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin of northwestern Colorado was studied in detail using some 321,000 Fischer assay analyses in the U.S. Geological Survey oil-shale database. The oil-shale section was subdivided into 17 roughly time-stratigraphic intervals, and the distribution of water in each interval was assessed separately. 

USGS Publication: Open-File Report 2012–1205
This map sheet with accompanying Geographic Information System (GIS) project is an update of the existing U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Conterminous U.S. Coal Fields map. This update was compiled using data primarily from the USGS National Coal Resource Assessment (NCRA) and information from other published maps.

Website News
2,263 scanned logs of various types including gamma ray, sonic, neutron, caliper, and lithologic descriptions are available for 621 different wells in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado. Logged intervals generally focus on the Green River Formation which contains large amounts of oil shale in this area. Image quality varies considerably with the condition of the starting material. Files are PDFs or TIFFs and file size ranges up to 560 megabytes with and an average size of 33 megabytes. This page contains data downloads for Piceance Basin, 2010 Oil Shale Assesment, compiled from DDS-69-Y.

USGS Publication: Open-File Report 2012–1151
The Organic Petrology Laboratory (OPL) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Eastern Energy Resources Science Center in Reston, Virginia, contains several thousand processed coal sample materials that were loosely organized in laboratory drawers for the past several decades. 

USGS Publication: Scientific Investigations Report 2012–5076
The in-place oil shale resources in the Eocene Green River Formation of the Piceance Basin of western Colorado and the Uinta Basin of western Colorado and eastern Utah are estimated at 1.53 trillion barrels and 1.32 trillion barrels, respectively. Although the Green River Formation is largely eroded for about a 20-mile area along the crest of the arch, the oil shale interval is similar in both basins, and 17 out of 18 of the assessed oil shale zones are common to both basins. Assessment maps for these 17 zones are combined so that the overall distribution of oil shale over the entire extent of Lake Uinta can be studied.

USGS Publication: Scientific Investigations Report 2012–5041
During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the U.S. Geological Survey mapped the entire area underlain by oil shale of the Eocene Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado. This report places the sixty-nine 7½-minute geologic quadrangle maps and one 15-minute quadrangle map published during this period into a comprehensive time-stratigraphic framework based on the alternating rich and lean oil shale zones.

USGS Publication: Fact Sheet 2011–3053
Increased demand for energy is driving rapid development of oil and gas, uranium, geothermal, wind, and solar sources of energy throughout the Western United States. By collaborating with decisonmakers to identify the most pressing information needs, an interdisciplinary team of USGS scientists is developing a multistep analytical process, or framework, for evaluating the cumulative effects and tradeoffs of energy development. The framework for analysis of the various energy types, spatial information, and analytical tools will be synthesized for end users in the form of an online Interactive Energy Atlas for Colorado and New Mexico.