12. Regional Geology, Oil and Gas Shows of Eastern Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Middle Florida

Regional geology highlights indicate potential in Cretaceous and Paleozoic rocks. The Coastal Plain and Piedmont of the southeast United States are under-explored. Stratigraphic overlaps due to progression and regression of the sea probably produced strand line stratigraphic traps easily missed by earlier exploration methods of sparse drilling and low-resolution surface 2D seismic data profiling. There is strong evidence of some large untested structures near and in the Piedmont ahead of the Appalachian Mountains including northeast Georgia imaged by the COCORP seismic survey. The prospective formations are the Vicksburg, Wilcox, Ripley, Eutaw and Tuscaloosa carbonates and sandstones. Also, the Floyd and Conasauga shales and conglomerate sequences from the eroding Appalachian Mountains are prospective. In Georgia, oil and gas shows were reported in Miocene, Wilcox and Eutaw sands. Several oil seeps are known to exist and others have been reported. Over 80,000 sq. miles of sparsely drilled real estate exist in Georgia and Florida alone. Oil and gas shows were encountered in a central North Carolina well in recent years located in Lee County. Gas shows were reported in a well drilled in Mathews County, Virginia in the 1920’s near the seacoast. Coal exists in northwest Georgia and was mined during the Civil War and again as recently as the 1970’s – 1980’s. There are also coal bed natural gas (CBNG) possibilities. Fig. 4.​1.