Upper Pennsylvanian and Lower Permian...Facies...Southern Eastern Shelf of the Midland Basin: Core Workshop

SW0023. Upper Pennsylvanian and Lower Permian Shelf, Slope, and Basin Depositional Facies of the Southern Eastern Shelf of the Midland Basin: Core Workshop, by T. F. Hentz. W. A. Ambrose, F. C. Palacios, and R. W. Baumgardner. 38-page text and 1 CD in back pocket containing slides of talks and core workshop notes. October 2017.

To purchase this publication as a downloadable PDF, please order SW0023D.



From the Introduction
Cores from the Eastern Shelf and adjacent southern part of the Midland Basin display a variety of shelf, slope, and basinal depositional facies of the Upper Pennsylvanian–Lower Permian (Virgilian–Wolfcampian) Cisco Group and equivalent strata. This workshop presents whole cores from (1) upper Virgilian incised-valley fluvial shelf deposits of the Lower Hope sandstone of the eastern part of the study area (Wiser Jacoby No. 14-C and Wiser Jacoby No. 3-B wells); (2) lower Wolfcampian siliciclastic slope channel-fill and levee deposits of the central part of the study area (Texaco Sterling No. 1-D well); (3) upper Wolfcampian carbonate-dominated slope debris-flow deposits of the central part of the study area (Amerada Hess Thompson No. C-1 well); and (4) mudrock-dominated, hemipelagic, and basin-floor sediment-gravity flow facies of the western part of the study area (Clinton Greer No. 2 well). All these deposits have historically been targets for reservoir development.

Cores are useful in understanding reservoir architecture because they display a vertical profile of rock fabric, contacts between beds, sedimentary structures, fossils, and a variety of accessory features such as trace fossils. Vertical variation in lithology, grain size, and stratification record changes in sedimentary processes and depositional environments through time. Workshop participants observed examples of vertically superimposed facies from shelf-fluvial, slope, and basin depositional systems.



Keywords: core, Eastern Shelf, Midland Basin, Upper Pennsylvanian, Lower Permian, depositional facies, Canyon Group, Cisco Group, Virgilian, Wolfcampian, reservoir development, Martin County, Howard County, Mitchell County, Nolan County, Taylor County, Midland County, Glasscock County, Sterling County, Coke County, tom Green County, Runnels County, Upton County, Reagan County, Irion County, Schleicher County, Concho County, Menard County, STARR, Texas

Citation
Hentz, T. F., Ambrose, W. A., Palacios, F. C., and Baumgardner, R. W., 2017,  Upper Pennsylvanian and Lower Permian Shelf, Slope, and Basin Depositional Facies of the Southern Eastern Shelf of the Midland Basin: Core Workshop: The University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, SW0023, 38 p.