Dr. Alan Chamberlain, partner of Cedar Strat Corporation in Las Vegas, claims that large oil reserves exist in Nevada that no one knows about.
Chamberlain estimates there are 1.89 trillion barrels of oil in Nevada.
“We'll out-do Saudi Arabia 10 times,” he said.
He presented his theories to the White Pine County Commission on Wednesday, asking them to delay the public lands bill. Chamberlain said if the county gave the federal government any land as part of the lands bill, any chance to find and drill oil on that land would be lost.
Chamberlain asserts that a proper geological study has never been done in Nevada; he says that according to conventional wisdom, the Great Basin is composed of horst and grabens, which led to theories and exploration about oil in the area to focus only in the grabens or valleys, where all the discoveries in Nevada have been made. He argues that lots of oil in Nevada lies in the thrust faults of a foldbelt which runs through the country to South America.
"When you think about it," he added, "it seems unlikely that the thrust faults from the foldbelt would be present in Canada, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, disappear in Nevada and then reappear in Texas."
Thrust belts contain one quarter of the world's oil, Chamberlain said. In other parts of the country, the thrust belts are obvious because oil seeps up to the surface. Here, he said, there are no oil seeps because the oil is trapped under a blanket of Tertiary volcanic rocks.
According to Chamberlain, Shell's 1954 oil discovery under the Tertiary unconformity in Railroad Valley appeared to confirm the conventional theories, so exploration activities over the years have tried to repeat that success. Several additional fields were found, with the largest discovery the Grant Canyon Field, which has produced about 20 million barrels of oil from essentially two wells since the early 1980s.
He said in the 1970s, the USGS authorized some geologists to make some geologic maps, but the effort was limited. The agency gave one geologist one year to map the 10,000 square foot area of Lincoln County -- “which is ridiculous,” he added. One geologist noted in his work that he had arbitrarily mapped the geology between mining districts, which is the only map available for White Pine County.
Chamberlain said he presented his thrust belt model to Exxon in the 1980s and the firm began to shoot seismic data outside of only the valleys that had been studied in the past. He said Exxon was excited by what they saw and drilled a well that confirmed the thrust model. Exxon didn't find any large oil reserves, and eventually pulled out. Chamberlain said they would have found big oil had they stayed. They pulled out after the Exxon-Valdez oil spill and chose to focus on foreign prospects, he added.
The USGS still doesn't share Chamberlain's oil optimism.
Others do.
Eden Energy is leasing 210,000 acres in Eureka County and White Pine County and spending millions to research and develop its Noah Project for drilling. The project is based almost entirely on Chamberlain's work.
County commissioners said Chamberlain came a bit late with his presentation. Commissioner John Chachas said he did not want to delay the lands bill, but would like to re-word it to allow Chamberlain access for testing specific areas for oil reserves. Chamberlain asked what the county was getting out of the lands bill and said it was worth almost nothing compared to the oil reserves he believes are in eastern Nevada. Commission Chairman Brent Eldridge said that the lands bill would likely have to give some land to the federal government, so Chamberlain should identify some key areas where he would most expect to find oil.
“The federal government failed, the state government failed, and I hope White Pine County doesn't fail in making a good decision,” Chamber-lain said.
