Lyons Sandstone Formation

Starved Rock State covers about 200 miles and some 470 million years, from Ordovician sandstones to Pleistocene glacial till. The Ordovician St. Peter Formation sandstone was deposited across the midcontinent during the second major marine transgression of the Paleozoic Era. The first transgression deposited Upper Cambrian to Lower Ordovician clastics and carbonates. The clastic to carbonate rock transition is consistent with gradual sea level rise over the North American craton. Sea level dropped late in the early Ordovician, exposing the carbonate strata to processes of cave development.

It cooled from a felsic intermediate magma which means medium silica content. After it cooled completely, the Boulder Creek Granodiorite was uplifted to the Earth’s surface due to the tectonic forces from the Ancestral Rockies mountain building event. This caused the granodiorite to be exposed to the surface creating a mountain-like structure which allows river to form and flow downstream. These rivers have high energy due to gravity and are able to transport big clasts of cobble size and deposit them at the bottom of the mountain. At the bottom of the river, the energy of the stream drops abruptly creating a poorly sorted conglomerate. As the stream continues to flow, it carries along sand to a beach environment. Here, the Lyons Formation is formed. Beach is an ideal environment for this formation because there a lot of sand and the oscillatory flow of the beach created ripple marks on the Lyons sandstone. Beach is usually a windy area, so it helps with the ripple formation and also the dry up the muddy area at the beach shore. This supports the evidence of mudcracks that were observed in the Lyons Formation. Based on the paleocurrent data from Morrison, CO, the wind was blowing to the East and these are the dip directions of the mudstone and sandstone beds. From the beach environment, these sea level advanced a little bit creating a shallow marine environment. This kind of environment supports the formation of the mudstone and sandstone where there is slow current. The water is shallow enough for sunlight to get to the bottom for the cyanobacteria, the earliest life on Earth, to obtain their nutrients and finally settle down in the beds forming ridge-like shape on the Lykins sandstone. With that depth of water, calcite is also able to precipitate out the water and is trapped in the pores of the sandstone. The Entrada and

Natural gas is one very important fossil fuel and from its various uses, its numbers have continued to dwindle. Supply and demand has taken a toll on this very precious commodity. Ordinary vertical drilling of natural gas has ceased to produce much and this once prevalent method may eventually end up becoming obsolete. In the 1990’s a different method that was being used, but wasn’t common, caught some attention and is called horizontal hydraulic fracturing or fracking for short. Since the method of fracking was first used in 1940, it has gradually changed and is now combined with a new strategy of drilling horizontally. This new way of drilling helps to reach vast amounts of previously inaccessible gases and oils that are stuck in shale. According to oil industries Devon energy, Chesapeake, and Halliburton’s estimates, around 827 million cubic feet of untapped gases and oils are under the U. S. but may not be as easily accessible as once thought (Mooney 80-85).

Marcellus Shale, also known, as the Marcellus Formation, is black, organically rich, shale that exists underneath the surface of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, and Virginia. The shale is located roughly one mile below the surface of these states and has an estimated 141 trillion cubic feet of attainable natural gas. As of 2015, Marcellus shale gas wells were reportedly yielding 14.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (“Marcellus Shale - Appalachian Basin Natural Gas Play”). This shale discovery is known as one of the largest natural gas reserves in the United States, and this underground gas is now reachable thanks to hydraulic fracturing and horizontally drilling. These two techniques, when used in combination, have enabled gas producers to extract shale gas both rapidly and economically” (“The Marcellus Shale Gas Boom”). Although, there are many myths and disagreements with the way America gets this natural gas, it has proven to have more advantages than disadvantages.

DIMOCK, PA -- Norma Fiorentino’s drinking water well was a time bomb. For weeks, as workers drilled natural gas deposits nearby, stray methane worked into tiny crevasses in the rock, leaking upward into the aquifer and slipping quietly into her well. Then, according to the state’s working theory, a pump turned on in her well house, flicked a spark, and caused a New Year’s morning blast that tossed aside a several-thousand-pound concrete slab. Afterward state officials found methane, the largest ingredient of natural gas, in her drinking water. Drilling for natural gas has caused explosions, polluted aquifers and even burning water. (Lustgarten n. pg.) Ninety percent of natural gas wells in the United States use hydraulic

approximately 5 km thick near the basin centre in North Dakota (Fig. 1) and approximates 800 km

In Holly Cross Shale there is basically nothing substantial. I don’t see any realease of ions, most of the hydrocarbons are still in the rock. The few picks are nitrogen oxygen so we can conclude that with the Holly cross shale is whatever is on the outside because nothing from the inside came out even after heating up to 800 °

The most recent rock, and the focus of this paper, is calcareous tufa (Bromfield, Baker, and Crittenden, 1967). It’s found around several hot springs in Midway, that span about 4.5 miles (Baker, 1968). These hot springs have, over time, built up deposits of the limestone. The tufa is being precipitated from the calcareous warm water. As the water reaches the surface, carbon dioxide is released; as the CO2 is released, calcium carbonate, or tufa, is made (Baker, 1968; Broomfield, Baker, and Crittenden, 1967; Kohler, 1979; Willis and Willis, 2000). The CO2 comes up in

The shale is a light to medium gray rock. It has slaty cleavages. The shale has a dull luster and is composed mostly of quartz and clay. The grain size is fine with a smooth texture. It has distinctive compositional horizontal bedding of about 2.2cm (light gray) to 12cm (dark gray) in thickness. The bedding is horizontal and parallel to the ground with a thickness of approximately 16cm to 24cm.

This porphyry copper-gold deposit was created by a number of tectonic events, along with hydrothermal alteration. It is located in Northwest B.C. on the Todagain Plateau, about 80km south of Dease Lake. The Red Chris deposit has dimensions of approximately 6.5km in length and 1.5 km in width, towards the surface (Gillstrom, Anand, & Robertson, February 14, 2012). Early exploration of this area began in 1956 (Baker, Ash, & Thompson, September 2, 1998). The first exploration holes were drilled in 1960, by Texas Gulf Sulfur (Patrick McCandless, personal communications, November 8). Imperial Metals Red Chris deposit, like most large deposits, had to have many drill holes done to determine the overall shape and grade of the deposit. 584 drill holes in total were drilled to delineate the deposit (Chris Rees, personal communications, November 9). The most significant of these drill holes was hole 07-335, located in the east zone it was graded at 1.01% copper, and 1.26g/t throughout its length of 1,024.1m (Gillstrom, Anand, & Robertson, February 14, 2012). “In my opinion this could have possibly been the best hole ever drilled said Chris Rees (personal communications, November

St. Peter sandstone consists mostly of silica, or quartz. The silica content is extremely high in these areas and virtually peak near 100%. These rocks are generally white in color, but may contain shades of bright pink as well. According to the Mohs scale, St. Peter sandstone maintains a hardness of seven (with relevance of the quartz), but possesses soft cementation.

A high cross sectional cutting of Hawkesbury Sandstone is exposed and subject to weathering in this stop. The cross bedding in the middle might indicate that coarse sand grains and some large quartz formed the

Oil shale deposit range from small presently economically recoverable reserves to large presently uneconomically recoverable resources.

The Werribee region illustrated to consist of different geological formations ranging from the Ordovician period to the Holocene epoch period. Werribee Gorge State park had the oldest formations with slate, shale, sandstone and Siltstone all from the Ordovician period. However, once in the woodland area; medium to a coarse grain of Devonian and granite was also found. You Yangs Regional Park had the second oldest formations as it consists of Coarse grained Devonian Granite, sediments of marine sands from the Pliocene period. However, it also consisted of Non-marine sand outwash from the most recent Alluvium period.

Since the purpose of hydraulic fracturing is to create secondary fractures in addition to naturally occurring within the subsurface, there is a general concern that this process might extend fractures to link aquifers. The chances of this occurring are likely remote, since the vertical distance separating the Marcellus Shale from most aquifers is usually much greater than the length of the fractures induced during hydraulic fracturing. In addition, several thousands of feet of rock layers typically overlie the Marcellus Shale and form a cap to restrict flow. It should be noted, however that if the shallow portions of the Marcellus Shale are developed, then the thickness of the overlying rocks would be less and the distance from the Marcellus to drinking water aquifers would be shorter, posing more of a risk to groundwater (DOE, 2009).