Eastern Green River Basin

The Eastern Green River Basin is a dessert basin located in the western part of the United States on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. It covers parts of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado and is estimated to hold 1.30 to 2.0 trillion barrels of oil from oil shale deposits.
The basins were formed during the Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene Laramide orogeny, while there is an intermittent Cambrian through present day sedimentation in the basin. The Eocene rocks are filled with different energy minerals such as shale, coal, and uranium. Other minerals that could be found in the basin include, trona, zerolites, clay, placer gold, and phosphate. An excess amount of fossil fauna and flora can also be found in this basin. These rocks make up many
different formations. The most prevalent would be the Green River Formation. Other formations include the Wasatch Formation and the Godiva River Member.
The basin is divided into four structural and topographic sub basins by their intra-basin anticlines. There are many anticlinal traps in the basin that hold oil and gas fields. Aside from the Cretaceous formations, there aren’t many stratigraphic traps. However, these Cretaceous formations do trap a significant amount of oil. There are also structural traps in these fields that are also filled with natural gas.