Word: overthruster
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...ground along Oil Creek, near Titusville, Pa., and hit history's first oil gusher. Now, after more than a half-century of decline, the oil-and gasfields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and New York are gurgling anew. The fields are part of what geologists call the Eastern Overthrust Belt, a corridor of convoluted limestone, sand and shale that stretches 1,200 miles along the slopes of America's Appalachian Mountains, from the Adirondacks to Alabama...
Though the Eastern Overthrust produced more than half the oil consumed by the U.S. at the turn of the century, the region's appeal diminished shortly thereafter, when wildcatters hit richer fields in Texas, California, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Yet with oil now selling for upwards of $38 per bbl., drillers are returning to the Eastern Overthrust for a fresh, and more thorough, look at what their predecessors might have left behind...
...with the Western Overthrust Belt, which stretches through the Intermountain West from Canada to the Rio Grande, the Eastern strip takes its name from the geological folding and overlapping that occur when mountain ranges are forced upward through sedimentary rock. Some oilmen estimate that such formations in the Western Overthrust states could hold as much as 13 billion bbl. of crude, or more than two-thirds of the amount that might be contained in the Alaskan North Slope...
Most energy experts doubt that the Eastern Overthrust's reserves will prove comparable to those of the Western belt. The U.S. Geological Survey believes that the region's potential could be as much as 1.5 billion bbl. of oil. Says Michel T. Halbouty, a leading Houston geologist and independent operator: "I believe a concerted exploration effort in that area will probably yield huge reserves...
...most drilling activity in the Eastern Overthrust has clustered around fields like those of western Pennsylvania, where oil and natural gas have already been proved to exist in abundance. But in the past two years, new geological studies have indicated that the overthrust formations may actually extend at least 100 miles farther east than previously believed. That would more than double the size of the belt, and energy companies have entered a furious bidding war to snatch up new exploration concessions. Standard of Indiana alone holds 7 million acres of Appalachian land...