Knowledge base

Why explore in Nevada?

Thrust belts and associated foreland basins provide a quarter of the earth’s known oil reserves. These are found where the western North American Cordillera coincides with organic-rich hydrocarbon source rocks, including the Mississippian Antler foreland basin of western Utah and central Nevada.

                                    Great Basin

As with thrust belts worldwide, some oil is trapped in giant thrust structures. Typically, oil seeps occur above the giant structures — except in Nevada where a blanket of Oligocene volcanic rocks and detritus buried and sealed the oil seeps. Some of these concealed Nevada oil seeps are unconformity-related, commercial grade oil accumulations.

The most extensive proprietary study of source rock in the Great Basin to date reveals that the Mississippian Antler foreland basin is made up of transgressive and regressive lacustrine sequences and Stigmaria root zones with rootlets penetrating bedding planes. Palynomorph biostratigraphy from oil wells confirms that the regressive sequences are mostly organic-rich lacustrine shales or lakebeds.

Geologists believe there are at least 30 geologic structures each containing in excess of 1 billion barrels of oil.

Railroad Valley
Railroad Valley, 35 miles from US OIl’s lease area in Hot Creek Valley, has produced over 40 million barrels of oil.  Testing of oil recovered from the Company’s Eblana-1 and Eblana-3 wells showed that the source rock was most likely Chainman Shale, also the source rock for Railroad Valley.