The Palo Duro Basin of the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico contains bedded Permian salts of sufficient thickness and depth for the basin to be considered as a potential site for long-term storage and isolation of high-level nuclear waste. Salt (primarily halite) is a desirable host rock because of its low permeability, high thermal conductivity, low moisture content, and high gamma-ray shielding properties (Johnson, 1976b). A major concern that was addressed during the waste isolation study of the Texas Panhandle region is the long-term integrity of the bedded-salt host rock.
Damon Mound salt dome, located in Brazoria County, Texas, is a shallow diaper that has salt less than 600 ft (180 m) and cap rock less than 100 ft (30 m) below the surface. Oligocene through Pleistocene strata thin toward the diapir, and the occurrence of a coralline facies of the Oligocene Heterostegina limestone above the cap rock suggests seafloor relief over the diapir during late Oligocene time. Thickening of Miocene and Plio-Pleistocene strata peripheral to the dome suggests syndepositional salt flow from surrounding salt withdrawal subbasins.
San Andres and Grayburg reservoirs have yielded about 42 percent (9.8 billion barrels) of the total cumulative production of oil from the Permian Basin of West Texas. However, recovery efficiencies have been low, and significant quantities of mobile oil remain after primary and conventional secondary recovery. Major San Andres and Grayburg reservoirs, each of which has produced more than 10 million barrels, are estimated to contain 8.7 billion barrels of unrecovered mobile oil.
Lineament analysis was used to study the relationship between subsurface structure and surficial features in East Texas, southeastern Oklahoma, southwestern Arkansas, and northwestern Louisiana-areas of low topographic relief, moderate vegetation cover, and diverse land use. More than 2,200 lineaments were mapped from four standard 1:250,000-scale Landsat Thematic Mapper images. Operator error and data-base variation were evaluated in areas of sidelap between adjacent images.
