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49-646: In 2016 USGS released an assessment of the resources of the Mancos Shale of the Piceance Basin in Colorado and Utah, "a total of assessed technically recoverable mean resources of 74 million barrels of shale oil, 66.3 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 45 million barrels of natural gas liquids ." The basin has come to increasing public attention in recent years because of widespread drilling to extract natural gas. The primary target of gas development has been

98-473: A byproduct of natural gas extraction. It is also known as "condensate", "natural gasoline", "casing head gas", "raw gas", "white gas" and "liquid gold". Drip gas is defined in the United States Code of Federal Regulations as consisting of butane , pentane , and hexane hydrocarbons . Within set ranges of distillation , drip gas may be extracted and used to denature fuel alcohol. Drip gas

147-756: A mention in Terrence Malick's movie Badlands . Drip gas was sold commercially at gas stations and hardware stores in North America until the early 1950s. The white gas sold today is a similar product but is produced at refineries with the carcinogen benzene removed. In 1975, the New Mexico State Police's drip gas detail – three men in pickup trucks – began patrolling oil and gas fields, catching thieves and recovering barrels of stolen gas. The detail stopped its work in 1987. The use of drip gas in cars and trucks

196-427: A rare place where conditions were right for a rich accumulation of undisturbed fossils. The most productive zone—called the split fish layer —consists of a series of laminated or varved lime muds about 6 ft (1.8 m) thick, which contains abundant fish and other fossils. These are easily split along the layers to reveal the fossils. This thin zone represents some 4000 years of deposition. The second fossil zone,

245-460: A variety of lacustrine limestones and dolomites . Volcanic ash layers within the various sediments from the then active Absaroka Volcanic field to the north in the vicinity of Yellowstone and the San Juan volcanic field to the southeast provide dateable horizons within the sediments. The trona (hydrated sodium bicarbonate carbonate) beds of Sweetwater County, Wyoming are noted for

294-485: A variety of rare evaporite minerals. The Green River Formation, is the type locality for eight rare minerals: bradleyite , ewaldite , loughlinite , mckelveyite-(Y) , norsethite , paralabuntsovite-Mg , shortite and wegscheiderite . It also has a natural occurrence of moissanite (SiC) and 23 other valid mineral species. The beds display a pronounced cyclicity , with the precession, obliquity, and eccentricity orbital components all clearly detectable. This enables

343-653: A varve here is 0.18 mm, with a minimum thickness of 0.014 mm and maximum of 9.8 mm. The sedimentary layers were formed in a large area named for the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River . The three separate basins lie around the Uinta Mountains (north, east, and south) of northeastern Utah: Fossil Butte National Monument in Lincoln County, Wyoming is in a part of

392-479: Is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields . Some gas species within the raw natural gas will condense to a liquid state if the temperature is reduced to below the hydrocarbon dew point temperature at a set pressure. The natural gas condensate is also called condensate , or gas condensate , or sometimes natural gasoline because it contains hydrocarbons within

441-400: Is also used as a cleaner and solvent as well as a lantern and stove fuel. Some early internal combustion engines —such as the first types made by Karl Benz , and early Wright brothers aircraft engines—used natural gasoline , which could be either drip gas or a similar range of hydrocarbons distilled from crude oil. Natural gasoline has an octane rating of about 30 to 50, sufficient for

490-424: Is dangerous for crew due to the danger of explosions, oxygen displacement and the threat of asphyxiating and anaesthetizing, which can occur within a few human breaths. Because condensate is typically liquid in ambient conditions and also has very low viscosity, condensate is often used to dilute highly viscous heavier oils that cannot otherwise be efficiently transported via pipelines . In particular, condensate

539-422: Is frequently mixed with bitumen from oil sands to create dilbit . In 2013, the increased use of condensate as diluent significantly increased its price in certain regions. Drip gas , so named because it can be drawn off the bottom of small chambers (called drips ) sometimes installed in pipelines from gas wells, is another name for natural-gas condensate, a naturally occurring form of gasoline obtained as

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588-479: Is now called the Green River Formation are in the journals of early missionaries and explorers such as S. A. Parker, 1840, and J. C. Fremont, 1845. Geologist Dr. John Evans collected the first fossil fish, described as Clupea humilis (later renamed Knightia eocaena ), from the Green River beds in 1856. Edward Drinker Cope collected extensively from the area and produced several publications on

637-409: Is now illegal in many states. It is also harmful to modern engines due to its low octane rating, much higher combustion temperature than that of gasoline, and lack of additives. It has a distinctive smell when used as a fuel, which allowed police to sometimes catch people using drip gas illegally. Green River Formation The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records

686-513: Is strictly found in Fossil lake only, while Erismatopterus is uncommon in Lake Uinta but common in certain mass mortality layers of Lake Gosiute and absent from Fossil Lake. The various fossil beds of the Green River Formation span a 5 million year period, dating to between 53.5 and 48.5 million years old. This span of time includes the transition between the moist early Eocene climate and

735-412: The 18 inch layer , is an unlaminated layer about 18 in (46 cm) thick that also contains abundant detailed fossils, but is harder to work because it is not composed of fissile laminae. The limestone matrix is so fine-grained that fossils include rare soft parts of complete insects and fallen leaves in spectacular detail. Some 35,000 fossiliferous rocks from the Green River Formation are housed at

784-917: The Laramide Orogeny , and are bounded by the Charleston-Nebo thrust fault , the Uinta Basin boundary fault, and the Grand Hogback monocline . According to the USGS Uinta-Piceance Assessment Team, "The black- shale facies of the Green River Formation is the main petroleum system of Tertiary age whereas the Mahogany zone of the Green River Formation is a minor component. The Cretaceous Mancos Group and equivalent rocks are

833-665: The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Fish fossils of Diplomystus and Knightia are found in Fossil Lake but not in Lake Gosiute. Only Lake Gosiute has fossils of catfish ( Ictaluridae and Hypsidoridae ) and suckers ( Catostomidae ). The catfish are found mostly in the deepest parts of the lake. Percopsid sand-roller relatives are known from all three lakes, however Amphiplaga

882-886: The Uinta Mountains in the center; the Wind River Mountains to the north; the Front Range , Park Range and Sawatch Range of the Colorado Rockies to the east; the Uncompahgre Plateau and the San Juan Mountains to the south and finally, the Wasatch Mountains of Utah and the ranges of eastern Idaho to the west. The lithology of the lake sediments is varied and includes sandstones , mudstones , siltstones , oil shales , coal beds, saline evaporite beds, and

931-555: The Williams Fork Formation of the Mesaverde Group , of Cretaceous age. The Williams Fork is a several-thousand-foot thick section of shale, sandstone and coal deposited in a coastal plain environment. The formation has long been known to contain natural gas. The sandstone reservoirs have low permeability and limited areal extent, however, which made gas wells uneconomic in the past. In 1969 an atomic device

980-628: The Interior Ken Salazar . "The USGS scientific report shows significant quantities of oil locked up in the shale rocks of the Piceance Basin. I believe it demonstrates the need for our continued research and development efforts." The Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline was proposed to carry hydrocarbon production to the Jordan Cove Energy Project in Coos Bay, Oregon . The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission denied

1029-445: The Piceance Basin in western Colorado. This new assessment is about 50 percent larger than the 1989 assessment of about one trillion barrels. Almost all of this increase is due to assessments of new geographic areas and subsurface zones that had too little data for previous research and assessments. "For the first time in 20 years, we have an updated assessment of in-place oil shale in the Piceance Basin of Colorado," said US Secretary of

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1078-649: The Uinta highland and the Rocky Mountains to the east and north. The lagerstätten formed in anoxic conditions in the fine carbonate muds that formed in the lakebeds. Lack of oxygen slowed bacterial decomposition and kept scavengers away, so leaves of palms, ferns and sycamores, some showing the insect damage they had sustained during their growth, were covered with fine-grained sediment and preserved. Insects were preserved whole, even delicate wing membranes and spider spinnerets. Vertebrates were preserved too, including

1127-404: The beds to be internally dated with a high degree of accuracy, and astrochronological dates agree very well with radiometric dates. Within the Green River Formation of southwest Wyoming in the area known as Fossil Lake , two distinct zones of very fine-grained lime muds are particularly noted for preserving a variety of complete and detailed fossils . These layers are an Eocene Lagerstätte ,

1176-427: The dog-sized Meniscotherium and Notharctus , one of the first primates. The earliest bats known from complete skeletons ( Icaronycteris index , I. gunnelli , [1] and Onychonycteris finneyi ), already full-developed for flight, are found here. Even a snake, Boavus idelmani , found its way into a lake and was preserved in the mudstone. The first documented records of (invertebrate) fossils from what

1225-438: The estimates of recoverable oil has been questioned, back in 2013, by geophysicist Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, who argued that the technology for recovering oil from the Green River oil shale deposit had not been developed and had not been profitably implemented at any significant scale. Green River oil shale is lacustrine type lamosite . The organic matter is from blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) . The unusual chemistry of

1274-546: The formation known as Fossil Lake because of its abundance of exceptionally well preserved fish fossils . The formation of intermontane basin / lake environments during the Eocene resulted from mountain building and uplift of the Rocky Mountains (late Cretaceous Sevier orogeny and the Paleogene Laramide orogeny ). Tectonic highlands supplied the Eocene sedimentary basins with sediment from all directions:

1323-679: The fossil fish from 1870 onwards. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (geologist-in-charge of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, the forerunner of the United States Geological Survey ) first used the name "Green River Shales" for the fossil sites in 1869. Millions of fish fossils have been collected from the area, commercial collectors operating from legal quarries on state and private land have been responsible for

1372-422: The fuel. Most were also equipped with thermosiphon cooling systems that used no water pumps. Natural convection allowed the water to flow up and out of the engine block and into the top of the radiator, where it cooled and dropped and fell to continue the cycle. Woody Guthrie 's autobiographical novel Seeds of Man begins with Woody and his uncle Jeff tapping a natural gas pipeline for drip gas. The gas also has

1421-856: The gasoline boiling range, and is also referred to by the shortened name condy by many workers on gas installations. Raw natural gas used to create condensate may come from any type of gas well such as: There are many condensate sources, and each has its own unique gas condensate composition. In general, gas condensate has a specific gravity ranging from 0.5 to 0.8, and is composed of hydrocarbons such as propane , butane , pentane , and hexane . Natural gas compounds with more than two carbon atoms exist as liquids at ambient temperatures and pressures. Propane , butane , and isobutane are liquid at normal temperatures only under pressure. Additionally, condensate may contain: There are hundreds of different equipment configurations to separate natural gas condensate from raw natural gas. The schematic flow diagram to

1470-419: The heavy fuel would flow to the carburetor. Shutters or curtains were typically used to restrict airflow to the radiator, keeping the engine sufficiently hot for efficient operation. Coolant temperatures in the 200 degree F range were normal. John Deere two-cylinder all-fuel tractors worked well on heavy fuel, as their long piston strokes, slow engine speeds and low compression ratios allowed for effective use of

1519-411: The heavy fuel. They were equipped with a small gasoline tank and a large fuel tank, both of which fed into a common valve supplying the fuel to the carburetor. The engine would be started on gasoline and the tractor would then be worked until the engine was sufficiently warm to change over. At that point, the fuel valve would be turned to switch the fuel supply from the gasoline tank to the fuel tank and

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1568-493: The high and low pressure separators may need to be processed to remove hydrogen sulfide ( H 2 S ) before the water can be disposed of underground or reused in some fashion. Some of the raw natural gas may be re-injected into the producing formation to help maintain the reservoir pressure, or for storage pending later installation of a pipeline. Natural gas condensate is generally more flammable and explosive than normal crude oil. Operating in areas where condensate has escaped

1617-561: The low pressure separator is sent to a "booster" compressor that raises the gas pressure and sends it through a cooler, and then to the main gas compressor. At the raw natural gas processing plant, the gas will be dehydrated and acid gases and other impurities will be removed from the gas. Then, the ethane ( C 2 ), propane ( C 3 ), butanes ( C 4 ), and pentanes ( C 5 )—plus higher molecular weight hydrocarbons referred to as C 5+ —will also be removed and recovered as byproducts. The water removed from both

1666-469: The low-compression engines of the early 20th century. By 1930, improved engines and higher compression ratios required higher-octane, refined gasolines to produce power without knocking or detonation. Beginning in the Great Depression , drip gas was used as a replacement for commercial gasoline by people in oil-producing areas. "In the days of simple engines in automobiles and farm tractors it

1715-729: The main source of Cretaceous oil and a major contributor of gas in the basin, whereas the Upper Cretaceous Mesaverde is a lesser contributor of oil but a significant source for gas. Ferron Sandstone coals are known to be a source of coalbed methane . The most prominent source of oil from Paleozoic rocks is the Permian Phosphoria Formation . 39°51′44″N 108°19′55″W  /  39.862317°N 108.332062°W  / 39.862317; -108.332062 Natural gas liquids Natural-gas condensate , also called natural gas liquids ,

1764-498: The majority of Green River vertebrate fossils in public and private collections all over the world. The Green River Formation contains the largest oil shale deposit in the world. It has been estimated that the oil shale reserves could equal up to 3 trillion barrels (480 billion cubic metres) of shale oil , up to half of which may be recoverable by shale oil extraction technologies ( pyrolysis , hydrogenation , or thermal dissolution of kerogen in oil shale). However,

1813-420: The operating pressure of and the distance to the raw natural gas processing plant and may require a multi-stage compressor. The gas condensate from the high pressure separator flows through a throttling control valve to a low pressure separator. The reduction in pressure across the control valve causes the condensate to undergo a partial vaporization referred to as flash vaporization . The raw natural gas from

1862-749: The osteoderms of Borealosuchus , the crocodile that was an early clue to the mild Eocene climate of Western North America. Fish are common. The fossils of the herring-like Knightia , sometimes in dense layers, as if a school had wandered into anoxic water levels and were overcome, are familiar to fossil-lovers and are among the most commonly available fossils on the commercial market. There were two genera of indigenous freshwater stingray , Heliobatis and Asterotrygon . Approximately sixty vertebrate taxa in all have been found at Green River. Besides fishes they include at least eleven species of reptiles, and some birds and one armadillo -like mammal, Brachianodon westorum , with some scattered vertebrae of others, like

1911-403: The past decade, along with higher gas prices, have made gas wells broadly economic in the area. In 2007 the basin contained five of the top 50 US gas fields in proved reserves (Grand Valley #16, Parachute #24, Mamm Creek #27, Rulison #29, and Piceance Creek #46). Increasing demand for energy resources has spurred interest in energy alternatives such as oil shale. The Piceance Basin contains one of

1960-429: The project a permit on March 11, 2016. The reason given was that Veresen had not demonstrated the need for the project, and that the benefits from the project would not outweigh the harm done to individual landowners to justify the use of eminent domain . The pipeline's backers had not yet found buyers for the natural gas. On March 25, Veresen announced that they had found a buyer for the gas that would be exported, which

2009-409: The right depicts just one of the possible configurations. The raw natural gas feedstock from a gas well or a group of wells is cooled to lower the gas temperature to below its hydrocarbon dew point at the feedstock pressure. This condenses a large part of the gas condensate hydrocarbons. The feedstock mixture of gas, liquid condensate and water is then routed to a high pressure separator vessel where

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2058-515: The sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado , Wyoming , and Utah . The sediments are deposited in very fine layers, a dark layer during the growing season and a light-hue inorganic layer in the dry season. Each pair of layers is called a varve and represents one year. The sediments of the Green River Formation present a continuous record of six million years. The mean thickness of

2107-449: The slightly drier mid-Eocene. The climate was moist and mild enough to support crocodiles , which do not tolerate frost, and the lakes were surrounded by sycamore ( e.g. Platanus wyomingensis ) forests. As the lake configurations shifted, each Green River location is distinct in character and time. The lake system formed over underlying river deltas and shifted in the flat landscape with slight tectonic movements, receiving sediments from

2156-499: The thickest and richest oil shale deposits in the world and is the focus of most on-going oil shale research and development extraction projects in the U.S. The Piceance Basin has an estimated 1.525 trillion barrels of in-place oil shale resources, and an estimated 43.3 billion tons of in-place nahcolite resources in the Piceance Basin. This mineral is embedded with oil shale in many areas. On 2 April 2009 The U.S. Geological Survey updated its assessment of in-place oil shale resources in

2205-425: The tractors were referred to as "all-fuel". The most important factor in burning heavy fuels in a spark-ignition engine is proper fuel vaporization. Tractors designed to run on those fuels usually used a "hot" intake air manifold that allowed exhaust heat to warm the manifold and carburetor to aid vaporization. Given the poor vaporization at low temperatures, all-fuel tractors were started on gasoline, then switched to

2254-404: The water and the raw natural gas are separated and removed. If a pressure boost is required, the raw natural gas from the high pressure separator is sent to the main gas compressor , which raises the pressure of the gases to whatever pressure is required for the pipeline transportation of the gas to the raw natural gas processing plant. The main gas compressor discharge pressure will depend upon

2303-594: Was a consortium of Japanese utilities. They suggested they would appeal the decision by FERC, and they had 30 days from the March 11 decision to do so. As of May 2018 energy producers hoped to revive the project. The Piceance Basin forms a geologic structural basin , and is the source of commercial oil and gas production. Separated from the Uinta Basin by the Douglas Creek Arch, both basins formed during

2352-552: Was detonated as part of a scientific experiment in a well drilled into the Williams Fork Formation southwest of Rifle, Colorado to determine whether the device would fracture rock and enable extraction of natural gas in commercial quantities. Project Rulison , as it was called, was successful in liberating natural gas in commercial quantities, but was abandoned when the gas was determined to be unusable due to radioactivity. Advances in hydraulic fracturing within

2401-614: Was not uncommon for anyone having access to a condensate well to fill his tank with 'drip,'" according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. Sometimes it worked fine. "At other times it might cause thundering backfires and clouds of foul-smelling smoke." Certain manufacturers such as John Deere made farm tractors specifically designed to run on heavy, low-octane fuels which were commonly called " distillate " or "tractor fuel". Other names were tractor vaporising oil (United Kingdom) and "power kerosene" (Australia). Often

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