Developments in Rocky Mountain Region in 1936

Abstract

Discovery of two oil-producing horizons at 3,085 and 5,014 feet, respectively, in the fresh-water Wasatch (Eocene) beds by The Ohio Oil Company on the Powder Wash anticline in Moffat County, Colorado, is the outstanding development of 1936. This discovery opens a vast new area for prospecting in northwestern Colorado and southwestern Wyoming. Cores from two deep tests in Wyoming on the Muskrat anticline in Fremont County, and on the Gooseberry anticline in Park County, indicate the possibility of two new black-oil fields in the Embar-Permian and Tensleep (Pennsylvanian). Discovery of oil in the Mosser dome in Yellowstone County, Montana, is of interest, although of questionable commercial importance. Deeper drilling on the Cedar Creek anticline of the Baker-Glendive gas area in eastern Montana has resulted in the discovery of black oil in the Madison (Mississippian) limestone at 6,820 feet and in the Devonian(?) at 8,050 feet. This well is less than ¼ mile from the North Dakota line on a narrow fold more than 100 miles in length, which extends through Dawson, Wibaux, and Fallon counties, Montana, and Bowman County, North Dakota. Much geophysical prospecting for structure was conducted throughout the region, and test wells so located in Goshen County, Wyoming, in Grant County, Nebraska, and in Washington and Yuma counties, Colorado, encountered basement rocks at much shallower depths than expected. Routine developments in the several fields, especially at Lance Creek, which was the hot spot of Wyoming, and new outlets for crude in the way of new pipe lines, have materially increased the production of the region.