The Salt Creek Oil Field is located in Natrona County, Wyoming.[1] 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.[2]
Petroleum seeps in the area were known before 1880, but oil strikes near Lander led to claims by Schoonmaker and Cy Iba.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] The "gusher" well reached an oil sand after drilling through 1000feet of shale.[6]
In 1915, a portion of the Teapot Dome was made Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 3.[7]
The field is on an anticline with 1500feet of closure, which formed in the Late Cretaceous or Early Tertiary.[2] The anticline has two distinct domes, the "Salt Creek Dome" to the north and the "Teapot Dome" to the south.[8] 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.[2] This second Frontier formation extends into the Teapot Dome to the south.[9] The Frontier lies between the Mowry Shale and Niobrara Formation.[2]
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.[10]
In 2016, CO2 was leaking from an abandoned well in the field and led to the temporary closure of a school.[11]