Overview
Geophysical data are available from four boreholes in the northern part of the Newark Rift Basin. Three of the boreholes are located on the campus of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: two of them remain partially open and accessible for further work. The holes were drilled over multiple years and through different projects; logging methods and data types vary from hole to hole, as outlined below.
TriCarb Well
The TriCarb well, or NYSTA-Tandem Lot #1 (New York State Thruway Authority-Tandem Lot Well #1) is located in Rockland County, NY, at the Exit 14 on the New York Thruway. It was drilled in 2011 by the TriCarb Consortium for Carbon Sequestration funded by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Technology Labs (NETL) Carbon Sequestration program. The goal was to characterize the northern Newark basin for potential geologic carbon storage. Following a 2D seismic survey of the area, a well about 6,990-ft deep was drilled transecting the Passaic Formation and the Palisade dolerite sill. The hole was drilled in two phases: first, it was drilled and logged to a depth of 1,506 ft, of which the upper 602 ft were cased. Then the hole was cased to 1,496 ft and deepened to a depth of 6,885 ft, with a single cored interval at 4,570-4,880 ft in the sediments above the Palisade sill. Drilling was followed by wireline logging and limited hydraulic testing with the Modular Formation Dynamics Tester. After the completion of drilling and logging operations the well was plugged, and the site restored to its original condition. Additional information can be found in Zakharova & Goldberg [2014].
Test Wells
Three stratigraphic test boreholes have been drilled on the Lamont campus. Test Wells (TW) #2, #3, and #4. TW2 and TW3 were initially drilled (without coring) in the 1980s-90s, with support from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Earth Institute of Columbia University. The results are reported in Goldberg & Burgdorff [2005] and Matter et al. [2006]. The TW2 hole was 750 ft deep, while TW3 was 1000 ft deep at that time. Both holes penetrated the outcropping Palisade Sill and the contact-metamorphosed sedimentary strata below it. Logging data from that phase are available in the database. With support through the TriCarb Consortium for Carbon Sequestration project In 2010-2013, the TW3 hole was deepened to 1,500 ft, and a new hole, TW4 was drilled to the total depth of 1,800 ft, with continuous coring from 646 ft to TD. In TW4, the upper 646 ft section within the Palisade Sill was rotary-drilled with cuttings collected every 10 ft interval. The section from 646 ft to 750 ft was drilled and cored using a 4.88-in diameter (PQ) diamond bit. The first sedimentary rocks below the Palisade sill were encountered at a depth of 691 ft. Hole TW4 was subsequently cased and cemented from 750 ft to the surface. TW4 was then drilled and cored from 750 ft to a total depth of 1,802 ft using a 3.84-in diameter (HQ) diamond bit. The crystalline basement was penetrated at a depth of 1,711 ft. Both TW3 and TW4 were logged using USGS and Schlumberger wireline tools. The recovered TW4 cores are currently archived at the Rutgers University Core Repository. Lamont test wells TW3 and TW4 are DEC-registered, capped, and accessible for further research. More information about prior studies in these holes can be found in Zakharova et al., [2016], O’Mullan et al. [2015], Yang et al. [2014].