Using gadolinium and titanium well logs to prospect for critical mineral enrichment in the black shales of the Cherokee Forest City Basin Available to Purchase

The Cherokee Forest City Basin (CFCB) is well known for its coal deposits and coalbed methane production. Other commodities, such as oil and natural gas—for both gas storage and extraction—are similarly important within the basin (Newell 2017; Merriam 2002). Many cyclothems are also documented within the Pennsylvanian aged succession within the basin and frequently contain black shales, coals, and underclay’s. These lithologies are known to host certain critical minerals such as rare earth elements (REE), platinum group elements (PGEs), vanadium lithium, and molybdenum; and at least is the case for REEs, are documented in high concentrations within the CFCB’s black shales. As we transition to renewable energies, the CFCB has the potential to play an integral role as a source for critical minerals (CMs) necessary for the construction of renewable energy technologies. To properly assess the CM endowment of the CFCB; it is first necessary to create a modern detailed stratigraphic and structural model of the basin to improve upon prior interpretations. Several petrophysical well log transects were constructed across the CFCB, to provide a stratigraphic and structural framework for the basin. From these, and additional transects, a 3D static geological model of the CFCB will be built that will support the creation of additional models for the Pennsylvanian successions’ CM content and mode of deposition. Extensive elemental analyses are also necessary for this goal and will be undertaken in the future through downhole elemental logging and drill core analyses via a GEO-TEK multi-sensor core logger. With these new elemental data and 3D model we can use a modified volumetric equation (Equation 1) to calculate the volumetric abundances of CMs in the CFCB’s Pennsylvanian succession.