Statement of Vincent Matthews III, Ph. D. There are two areas I am about to give. of my background that are relevant to the testimony that First, I conducted exploration work in the Overthrust Belt from California to Canada for nearly five years while employed by Amoco Production Company, and when I resigned from Amoco last year, I was Division Exploration Manager for the Overthrust Belt. Secondly, prior to my experience with Amoco, I was an Associate Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies and was a co-founder of an Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Program. The concern I have about S.2801 is three-fold. 1) The bill would prevent an adequate assessment of the oil and gas potential of wilderness study areas, particularly in the complex areas of the Overthrust Belt, because only industry has the expertise and the experience. 2) Oil and gas exploration can be conducted in environmentally sensitive areas by industry in a manner that will have minimal impact. 3) The removal of even small areas of the Overthrust Belt from oil and gas exploration has the potential of having a major impact on our future resources because it has been demonstrated that very small areas of the Overthrust Belt can hold very major resources of oil and gas. Many of these wilderness study areas lie along the Overthrust Belt and because the Overthrust Belt is the most significant new petroleum province to be found in the United States since the discovery of Prudhoe Bay more than a decade ago; most of my remarks are going to be directed toward Overthrust Belt Exploration. The Overthrust Belt which cuts across western North America (Figure 1) is an area that formed more than 100 million years ago when huge masses of the earth's crust were squeezed together and moved distances that boggle the imagination. Entire mountain ranges in Western Wyoming have been brought to the surface from 2 miles under the ground and moved horizontally as much as 15 miles (Figure 2). These tremendous movements caused very intense crumpling and breaking of the rock layers within these large masses. result, this area contains the most complex geology in North America and exploration for oil and gas in this province is extremely difficult, and is still in its' infancy. As a The first Overthrust Belt production in North America was found in 1936 in Canada near Calgary, Alberta. In the forty-four years since then, many other discoveries have been made in the Canadian Overthrust Belt. It is now estimated that about 16 trillion cubic feet of gas and 400 million barrels of oil have been found in the Canadian portion. The 16 trillion cubic feet of gas is equivalent to about one-third of a Prudhoe Bay-sized field when converted to BTU equivalents. Mexico has also established production in their portion of the Overthrust Belt. They presently are producing 180 million cubic feet of gas per day and the development of that area is still in its infancy. Additionally, several small gas fields have been found in the Alaskan belt just north of the Brooks Range. The Overthrust Belt in the western United States was considered a graveyard by the oil and gas industry as a result of some 500 dry holes having been drilled in the belt prior to the 1975 discovery by American Quasar at Pineview Field in northeastern Utah. Since 1975, many additional fields have been found in the Overthrust Belt in western Wyoming and adjacent Utah. In testimony presented to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Amoco Production estimated that 8.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 623 million barrels of oil have been found. This is enough energy to supply the annual heating and cooling requirements for 600,000 midwestern homes for a period of 100 years. Significanty this vast energy resource is concentrated in a small area only 10 x 50 miles in extent; a land area equal to less than 0.5% of the total land area of the Overthrust Belt in the western U.S. The individual fields in this highly prolific area are also small in areal extent. For instance, one well in the Whitney Canyon Field has been estimated by Amoco to contain 265 BCF of gas in the square mile surrounding that well. Four or five square miles like this can contain 1 trillion cubic feet of gas. By comparison, a field with similar reserves located north of Denver which is not in the Overthrust Belt, covers 500 square miles, and contains approximately 800 wells. Because the fields in the Overthrust are so small in areal extent, they are much harder targets to find, but on the other hand, their small areal extent means that there is a much smaller impact on the environment. One might ask why after 500 dry holes and so many years of exploration without success, the Overthrust Belt is now experiencing such a high degree of success. The answer lies primarily with the sophisticated data processing of our seismic information using computer methods that just weren't available a few years ago. A typical success story is exemplified in the recent discovery of a major new field in the Overthrust belt: East Painter Reservoir. Conventional processing of a seismic line over this area did not show a structure that warranted the drilling of a test well. However, a proprietary processing technique of Amoco's brought out the feature that subsequently led to the discovery of the field. To give you an idea of the high degree of sophistication used in this technique, the reprocessing took 2 1/2 hours of computer time. Following the discovery, another new seismic technique called 3D seismic was used to delineate the extent of the oil field. Computer processing of this data took nearly 6 months of full time effort. processing is not the whole answer. But data Tremendous strides have been made in the way we obtain our seismic information. The seismic soundwaves are created by dynamite placed in shot holes and detonated. Light-weight, shot-hole, drill rigs have been developed which can be transported by helicopter. This seismic technique is advantageous from two standpoints. First, it gives much better information than the above-ground explosion techniques. Because the dynamite is being set off underground, rather than above-ground, it gets much more energy down into the ground where you want it. As a result, more and better data is recorded from the subsurface. Second, the environmental impacts are much less than the commonly used surface-explosion techniques. The portable-drill technique is almost noiseless, leaves virtually no scar, and presents virtually no fire hazard. Amoco Production Company has carried out a seismic exploration program of this type in Montana in an area containing three endangered species. The Forest Service monitored this project very carefully. I urge you to get the Forest Service's evaluation of this technique because I believe that they were very favorably impressed with how little impact this technique had on the environment. Not all companies are currently using these portable drill-rig techniques. In my opinion, the Forest Service should be more stringent in not allowing above-ground seismic exploration and should require |