Summary

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there is a new and significantly improved technology for exploiting Rocky Mountain gas resources (Surdam, 1997a,b). Everyone that has examined the hydrocarbon potential of the Rocky Mountains acknowledges that the gas resources in Laramide Basins are huge; however, it is becoming increasingly apparent that conventional exploration technologies are inadequate to delineate and exploit many of these energy resources. The problem is that conventional exploration strategies and technologies are directed toward detecting and delineating hydrocarbon traps, either structural or stratigraphic. However, the huge, anomalously pressured, gas and gas condensate resources of the Rocky Mountains commonly do not occur as conventional traps, but instead are located in volumes of rock characterized by enhanced porosity and permeability within large, capillary-dominated parts of the stratigraphic column (Surdam et al., 1995). These types of accumulations are best known as basin-center, or deep-basin deposits. An outstanding example of this type of hydrocarbon accumulation is the Jonah field in the northern Greater Green River Basin; this field is confined by neither structural closure nor conventional stratigraphic trapping. Thus, many of these unconventional, anomalously pressured gas and gas condensate accumulations are proving to be transparent to conventional exploration strategies and technologies, so that huge energy resources remain untapped (Surdam, 1992).

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90937©1998 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah