Cisco Oil Field is an

oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the prese ...

located in

Grand County, Utah Grand County is a county on the east central edge of the U.S. state of Utah, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 9,669. Its county seat and largest city is Moab. Grand County is home to one of the nine stat ...

. The field was discovered in 1924 in the now abandoned town of

Cisco, Utah Cisco is a ghost town in Grand County, Utah, United States near the junction of State Route 128 (SR‑128) and Interstate 70 (I‑70). History The town started in the 1880s as a saloon and water-refilling station for the Denver and Rio Grande W ...

. It is one of the oldest oil fields in the state of

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

. The field has been developed intermittently since then with the discovery of several small accumulations of oil. The field lies along a larger feature known as the Uncompahgre Uplift which is a boundary between Paradox Basin, the

Uintah Basin The Uinta Basin (also known as the Uintah Basin) is a Physiographic regions of the world, physiographic section of the larger Colorado Plateaus province, which in turn is part of the larger Intermontane Plateaus physiographic division. It is als ...

and the

Piceance Basin The Piceance Basin is a geologic structural basin in northwestern Colorado, in the United States. It includes geologic formations from Cambrian to Holocene in age, but the thickest section is made up of rocks from the Cretaceous Period. The basi ...

. The field is a series of localized oil accumulations that are produced from several different channel sands in the Mancos, Cedar Mountain,

Dakota Dakota may refer to: * Dakota people, a sub-tribe of the Sioux ** Dakota language, their language Dakota may also refer to: Places United States * Dakota, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Dakota, Illinois, a town * Dakota, Minnesota ...

, Saltwash and Brushy Basin zones (Morgan, 1999 and 2001).

Natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

and

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

are produced from the Mancos, Cedar Mountain and Dakota formations, while the Brushy Basin and Saltwash production is mostly

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring u ...

The productive reservoirs are either structurally controlled by Horst and

Graben In geology, a graben () is a depression (geology), depressed block of the Crust (geology), crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German language, German, meaning 'ditch' or 't ...

features or isolated stratigraphic traps related to either lithological or permeability pinchouts (Tedesco, 2013). The field is along Cotton Creek Anticline (Morgan, 1999). The depth for production ranges from . The field straddles the I-70 highway between Moab and Grand Junction. The oil gravity is 34–35 degrees API while the natural gas is . The oil is derived locally as in the Mancos, Cedar Mountain and Dakota sandstones from the adjacent Dakota shale. The oil in these reservoirs is typically a moderate to light green color. The oil found in the Saltwash and Brushy Basin reservoirs contains a heavier black oil that is Pennsylvanian in age and has migrated from the adjacent Paradox Basin.

References

Morgan C.D., 1999, Petroleum geology of the Cisco Townsite and Cisco Wash Areas, Grand County, Utah, Utah Geological Survey, Oil and Gas Field Study 22 Morgan C.D., 2001, Petroleum geology of the Agate, Danish Wash, Sage, and Seiber nose reservoirs in the Greater Cisco Field Area, Utah Geological Survey, Field Study 23 Tedesco, S. A., 2013, Geology and seismic interpretation of the Cisco Springs area, Uncompahgre Uplift, Grand County, Utah, AAPG Rocky Mountain Section 62nd Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT September 22–24, 2013, Search and Discovery Article 90169. Geography of Grand County, Utah Oil fields in Utah Buildings and structures in Grand County, Utah {{utah-geo-stub