The Powder River Basin: A persistent player in Wyoming’s energy landscape

Abstract

The Cretaceous-Tertiary strata of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin have long been a source of natural resources, including coal, oil, and natural gas. Coal mining and oil drilling have been ongoing in the basin for more than a century. Coal mining started in the late 1800s, and today, Wyoming is the largest coal-producing state in the U.S. A coalbed methane boom-and-bust cycle in the 2000s left tens of thousands of wells idle or abandoned. Historical oil production has been largely from vertical wells in the Minnelusa/Tensleep, Muddy, Frontier/Turner, Shannon, Sussex, Parkman, and Teapot Formations. More recently, interest in unconventional source-rock reservoirs like the Mowry Shale and Niobrara Formation has grown in tandem with directional and horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology. Interest was so explosive that the state of Wyoming imposed new permitting regulations to keep activity under control. Like a bellwether for the energy industry, Wyoming has seen it all, from boom-and-bust cycles to fracking to carbon capture.