New source rock data for the Mowry and Thermopolis Shales in the Wind River Basin, Wyoming

In 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessed the potential for undiscovered, technically recoverable continuous (unconventional) oil and gas resources in the Mowry Shale in the Wind River Basin Province (Finn and others, 2021). To better characterize the source rock potential of the Mowry Shale and associated strata, 129 samples were collected from 45 wells from the well cuttings collection stored at the USGS Core Research Center in Lakewood, Colorado. The sampled wells are located along the margins of the basin in order to obtain samples that were not subjected to the effects of deep burial and subsequent organic carbon loss due to thermal maturation (Daly and Edman, 1987) (fig. 1). One hundred samples are from the upper siliceous [...]