Geology and Seismic Interpretation of the Cisco Springs Area, Uncompaghre Uplift, Grand County, Utah

Steven Tedesco
Running Foxes Petroleum Inc.

The Uncompaghre uplift in the Cisco Springs area, Grand County, Utah has a number of shallow oil and gas fields that produce from Cretaceous and Jurassic age sandstone reservoirs. The production is predominantly from the Dakota and Cedar Mountain sandstones that were deposited in a general northeast-southwest direction. The area is dominated by a plunging northwest trending structural anticline that is faulted on its southwestern side. Associated with this structure are numerous isolated single well producers, both structural, structural-stratigraphic and stratigraphic traps, that are in many cases are surrounded by numerous dry holes. The top of the structure is dominated by sub-economic to marginally economic gas wells and a series of oil wells lie in a graben structure that parallels the structural high to the west. Numerous cross-faulting and compartments that help define the present productive trend and potential additional locations. Some of these wells have produced over 40,000 barrels of oil and simple volumetric calculations suggest many of these wells are draining a much larger area. In 2009, approximately 17 miles of 2D were shot in order to better define these seemingly very erratic reservoirs. Seismic interpretation confirms that a number of channels on and off structure are narrow elongated channels that would be difficult to find using subsurface mapping methods alone. Seismic has also defined several channel trends off structure and demonstrated the very narrow nature of these reservoirs. The integration of seismic with subsurface data has revitalized an old area.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90169©2013 AAPG Rocky Mountain Section 62^nd Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah, September 22-24, 2013