U.S. Geological Survey

Digital Data Series DDS–69–Y

National Oil and Gas Assessment Project:

Oil Shale and Nahcolite Resources of the Piceance Basin, Colorado

By U.S. Geological Survey Oil Shale Assessment Team 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

KEN SALAZAR, Secretary

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Marcia K. McNutt, Director

For sale by U.S. Geological Survey Information Services

Box 25286, Building 810

Denver Federal Center

Denver, CO 80225-0086

Telephone (303) 202-4200

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Telephone 1-888-ASK-USGS

URL: http://www.usgs.gov/

Introduction

This report presents an in-place assessment of the oil shale and nahcolite resources 

of the Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado. The 

Piceance Basin is one of three large structural and sedimentary basins that contain 

vast amounts of oil shale resources in the Green River Formation of Eocene age. 

The other two basins, the Uinta Basin of eastern Utah and westernmost Colorado, 

and the Greater Green River Basin of southwest Wyoming, northwestern Colorado, 

and northeastern Utah also contain large resources of oil shale in the Green River 

Formation, and these two basins will be assessed separately.

Estimated in-place oil is about 1.5 trillion barrels, based on Fischer assay results from 

boreholes drilled to evaluate oil shale, making it the largest oil shale deposit in the 

world. The estimated in-place nahcolite resource is about 43.3 billion short tons.

Contact Information

This volume is one of a series of products resulting from the National Oil and Gas 

Assessment project of the U.S. Geological Survey. Inquiries about this CD–ROM or 

the project should be addressed to:

Ronald C. Johnson, Project Chief

U.S. Geological Survey

Box 25046, Mail Stop 939

Denver Federal Center

Denver, CO 80225-0046

Telephone: (303) 236-5546

E-mail: rcjohnson@usgs.gov

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Disclaimer

This Compact Disc-Read Only Memory (CD–ROM) publication was prepared by an agency of the 

United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of its 

employees, make any warranty, expressed or implied, or assume any legal liability or responsibility for 

the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed in 

this report, or represent that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference therein to any 

specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise 

does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United 

States Government or any agency thereof. Although all data and software published on this CD–ROM 

have been used by the USGS, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made by the USGS as to the accuracy of the data and related materials and (or) the functioning of the software. The act of distribution shall 

not constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the USGS in the use of these data, 

the software, or related materials.

Using This CD

The descriptive and interpretive text chapters of this volume are in PDF format. Use Adobe Acrobat 

Reader, version 7.0 or later to access these chapters.

Contained on this CD–ROM are tabular data and graphical data in support of the assessment. The 

chapter text PDF contains links to the data and images. Data-table files in various formats are presented, 

usable in spreadsheet and database software. Graphical and summary-table files are presented as portable 

document format files (.pdf files) and spreadsheets.

GIS information is presented in the Spatial folder and its subfolders that contain the spatial data and 

documentation. The Spatial folder can be found on Disc 2.

The Spatial/Doc folder contains metadata for the Piceance Basin spatial data in .htm format. Metadata 

can also be found embedded with the Spatial Data in .xml format for use in ESRIs ArcCatalog.

Contents of This CD–ROM 

When the CD–ROM is opened, the following folders appear on the screen:

OPEN_FIRST—from OPEN_FIRST.pdf in this folder, navigate to the 

ReadMe file, pages of chapter titles, spatial data.

READ_ME—you can access the ReadMe file from this folder also.

REPORTS—listing of, and links to, the chapters, plus the supporting data.

SUPPORT DATA—folder containing files for the histograms and 

spreadsheets used in Chapter 7. 

SPATIAL DATA—folder containing the ReadMe_spatial.pdf for the GIS data 

that can be found on Disc 2.

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