DOI: 10.5066/p9tr93e3
title: Natural Gas Compositional Analyses Dataset of Gases from United States Wells

description: This dataset was created to document the natural occurrence of helium and carbon dioxide throughout the United States. This dataset is sourced primarily from publicly available data from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Federal Helium Program and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The Federal Helium Program, which originally began in 1925 under the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) has analyzed thousands of gas samples during its history. These analyses were reported in several publications (Moore and Sigler, 1987; Hamak and Gage, 1992; Hamak and Sigler, 1991, 1993; Sigler, 1994; Hamak and Driskill, 1996; Gage and Driskill, 1998, 2003, 2005; Driskill, 2008), and additional unpublished data residing in an internal BLM dataset are made available here. A dataset that contains much of the data from USBM, BLM, and USGS analyses, as well as other published data, is publicly available (U.S. Geological Survey, 2019), and those additional data are available in this dataset. The different analytical techniques and equipment used from the beginning of the Federal Helium Program through 1985 are discussed in Moore and Sigler (1987). This data release includes all gas analyses from the BLM and USGS datasets with measured values of helium or carbon dioxide concentrations, in molar percent (mol %). In addition, mol % concentrations of other gases are provided, if available, including hydrogen, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, argon, oxygen, methane, ethane, propane, butane, isobutane, pentane, isopentane, and all hexane and higher hydrocarbons are grouped as C6+. These data have been published or collected through time, with varying methods, that produce values with different significant figures. The data have been reported as provided, which is why significant figures are inconsistent in the dataset. The analytical data in the data release are supported with identifying information. If available, the American Petroleum Institute (API) number, which is a unique 10-digit well identifier, is provided. The first two values of the API number indicate the State, the next three indicate the county, and the last five numbers are a unique code for a specific well. If available, the latitude and longitude of the well, and the names of the gas-producing formation and field, the formation age, the county and state, and the drilling, sampling, and publication dates, are provided as well. The sample depth in feet and the date that the sample was collected are listed for each well. The reported date is in mm/dd/yyyy format. Wherever "000" is present in the sample date, this indicates that the sampling day and/or month were not listed in the source publications. Blank cells in this dataset indicate that, in the original source datasets, the cells were originally either: 1. blank or indicated as null; 2. listed as "not given" or "unknown"; or 3. had a value of "0". Some sample compositional data provide incomplete analytical results, which is why the compositional data for some samples do not sum to 100 mol %. References Cited Driskill, D.L., 2008, Analyses of natural gases, 2005-2007: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 427, 199 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/documents/files/Library_BLMTechnicalNote427.pdf. Gage, B.D., and Driskill, D.L., 1998, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1996-1997: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 404, 71 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://ia800604.us.archive.org/14/items/analysesofnatura00gage/analysesofnatura00gage.pdf. Gage, B.D., and Driskill, D.L., 2003, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1998-2001: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 412, 173 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/documents/files/Library_BLMTechnicalNote412.pdf. Gage, B.D., and Driskill, D.L. , 2005, Analyses of Natural Gases, 2002-2004: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 418, 243 p. , accessed May 14, 2021, at https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/documents/files/Library_BLMTechnicalNote418.pdf. Hamak, J.E., and Driskill, D.L., 1996, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1994-1995: U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 399, 70 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://ia800606.us.archive.org/10/items/analysesofnatura00hama/analysesofnatura00hama.pdf. Hamak, J.E., and Gage, B.D., 1992, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1991: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9318, 97 p. Hamak, J.E., and Sigler, S.M., 1991, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1986-1990: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9301, 315 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB92154863.xhtml. Hamak, J.E., and Sigler, S.M., 1993, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1992: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9356, 62 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB93227437.xhtml. Moore, B.J., and Sigler, S.M., 1987, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1917-1985: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9129, 1197 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB87232211.xhtml. Sigler, S.M., 1994, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1993: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9400, 58 p., accessed May 14, 2021, at https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB94204039.xhtml. U.S. Geological Survey, 2019, Energy Geochemistry Database (EGDB): U.S. Geological Survey provisional database, accessed June 14, 2021 at https://certmapper.cr.usgs.gov/data/apps/geochem-db/.