Salt Creek Oil Field

The Salt Creek Oil Field is located in Natrona County, Wyoming.^[2] By 1970, more oil had been produced by this field than any other in the Rocky Mountains region and accounted for 20 percent of the total production in Wyoming.^[3]

Petroleum seeps in the area were known before 1880, but oil strikes near Lander led to claims by Schoonmaker and Cy Iba.^[4] In 1889 the first well to strike oil was drilled in the Shannon pool by Philip M. Shannon, president of the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Company, who in 1895 built an oil refinery in Casper to process the oil.^[5] Dr. Porro, an Italian geologist working for the Dutch company Petroleum Maatschappij Salt Creek in 1906, located the Dutch No. 1 near a large oil seep south of the Shannon wells, which was drilled in 1908.^[6] The "gusher" well reached an oil sand after drilling through 1,000 feet (300 m) of shale.^[7]

In 1915, a portion of the Teapot Dome was made Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 3.^[8]

The field is on an anticline with 1,500 feet (460 m) of closure, which formed in the Late Cretaceous or Early Tertiary.^[3] The anticline has two distinct domes, the "Salt Creek Dome" to the north and the "Teapot Dome" to the south.^[9] Production is from stratigraphic traps in the Lakota, Sundance and Tensleep formations plus two Frontier Formations, which is an offshore bar sandstone, all of which are interbedded with marine shales.^[3] This second Frontier formation extends into the Teapot Dome to the south.^[10] The Frontier lies between the Mowry Shale and Niobrara Formation.^[3]

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  Salt Creek Oil Field Stratigraphy^[11]
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  Shannon Oil Pool in Salt Creek Oil Field^[12]
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  Geological section of Salt Creek Oil Field^[13]

In the Salt Creek field, Enhanced Oil Recovery with CO₂ is used to increase oil production. The CO₂ is captured in a natural gas facility in the nearby LaBarge field.^[14]

In 2016, CO₂ was leaking from an abandoned well in the field and led to the temporary closure of a school.^[15]