Thermal analysis of the southern Powder River Basin, Wyoming

Temperature and geologic data from over 3000 oil and gas wells within a 180 km x 30 km area that transect across the southern Powder River Basin in Wyoming, U.S.A., were used to determine the present thermal regime of the basin. Three-dimensional temperature fields within the transect, based on corrected bottom-hole temperatures (BHTs) and other geologic information, were assessed using: (1) A laterally constant temperature gradient model in conjunction with an L1 norm inversion method, and (2) a laterally variable temperature gradient model in conjunction with a stochastic inversion technique.