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The Powder River Basin Is The United States

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The Powder River Basin Located in the western United States, the Powder River Basin is currently the United States largest producer of coal, and the coal that is produced here is some of the cleanest coal that is used in coal burning power plants. By producing such large quantities of low sulfur, clean burning coal, the Powder River Basin is of great interest, and we will examine the conditions and factors that helped to form some of the largest and cleanest coal seams in the world, along with coal production and other coal bed resources. A basin, as defined by Merriam Webster 's dictionary, is "a broad area of the earth beneath which the strata dip usually from the sides toward the center" and on a simplified level, the Powder River Basin is exactly this (Merriam-Webster.com, 2014). The Powder River Basin spans from the northeast half of Wyoming into the southeast corner of Montana. A geologic map of the Powder River is shown on the following page. The basin is an assymetrical syncline with its axis lying along the western side. The coal-bearing rocks in the western part of the basin dip over 20 degrees, while the rocks at the eastern side of the basin only dip up to 5 degrees (Flores et al., 2008). As indicated by the following stratigraphic column, the coal-bearing rocks of the powder river basin were deposited from the Upper Cretaceous into the Eocene epoch. These rocks can reach a thickness of almost 8000 feet at the basin axis (Curry, 1971). Found at the

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