Sequence Stratigraphy

The West Texas (Permian) Basin is a complexly structured intracratonic (IC) basin with prolific oil and natural gas production. It began as a subsidence basin ('Tobosa Basin') from Middle Ordovician to Devonian time, a response to the Cambrian rifting that separated Gondwana and Laurentia. In the Pennsylvanian to early Permian, it formed part of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains (ARM) orogen. The Texas-New Mexico segment of the ARM contains small to medium basement-cored uplifts, folds, thrust faults and two trends of strike-slip faults, with a pattern that is consistent with SW-NE compression. The largest thrust fault known in the basin is SW-vergent, and faces the deepest part of the Delaware Basin. This direction of compression is similar to that observed in the southern Oklahoma part of the ARM, which shows NE-vergent thrusting and left-lateral faulting.

This SW-NE compressive stress is grossly inconsistent with the northwestward convergence of the Ouachita-Marathon thrust belt southeast of the ARM. The ARM-generating stress may have originated either from the Pacific side (by flat subduction) or from strong continental collision in the Appalachian Orogen. Lines of weakness generated during the Proterozoic and/or Cambrian concentrated stress and created the complex structures.

The West Texas branch of the ARM is buried by over 2.5 km of post-deformational Permian strata -- the Permian Basin. Subsidence began during ARM deformation, then increased in rate and continued to the end of the Permian. Permian subsidence resulted in the maintenance of isolated deep-water marine basins until Late Permian time. The Marathon orogen also subsided, and shed little clastic material into the basin. Despite Mesozoic basin-margin modifications, the Permian isopach pattern suggests a bowl-shaped subsidence centered on the Central Basin axis of uplift. The size and shape of the Permian Basin are similar to other IC basins (Illinois, Michigan, Williston). Similar to some IC basins, the central basin area hosts a 1100-Ma mafic complex, which was subjected to compression in Pennsylvanian time. Sinking of a mafic crust or its subjacent lithosphere, begun during compression, may have been a driving force for Permian subsidence.

Over most of the basin, later Permian subsidence was responsible for putting source rocks into the oil window. Further maturation to gas occurred within the deep basins generated by ARM deformation and Marathon thrust loading.

Comparison of the hydrocarbon systems and geometries of the complex intracratonic West Texas (Permian) Basin and the complex postrift subsidence basins of the Gulf Coast / Gulf of Mexico yield useful insights for basin evolution and play development. The West Texas basin contains source rocks in the Ordovician and Devonian, but much generation comes from the Late Mississippian, Pennsylvanian and Permian basinal sediments. These were deposited in a poorly ventilated remnant basin during compression and strike-slip of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains orogeny, and subsidence of the intracratonic Permian Basin. Maturation resulted from Permian intracratonic subsidence, with hydrocarbons sealed from later leakage by late Permian salt and a fortunate tectonic setting. By contrast, the major Jurassic source rocks of the Gulf basins are at the base of the postrift subsidence, and are matured by further subsidence. Later Cretaceous source rocks (Eagle Ford) are mature in the main Gulf basin, but again lie near the bottom of the thick sedimentary package in the area. The younger part of the succession yields mostly gas formed during outbuilding of the shelf margin by Cenozoic deltaic progradation. No cap is present on the basin (except for subsalt plays), and seepage is widespread.

The Yegua Formation (Late Middle Eocene) is a minor siliciclastic progradation of the Gulf of Mexico shelf margin between the larger Early Eocene and Oligocene shelf-margin progradations. During Yegua time (and unlike the other units of the Middle and Late Eocene), four to eight sea-level fluctuations with a 100-300 ka period alternately pushed marine rocks toward the basin margins and pushed deltaic sedimentation to and past the shelf edge. Because of limited to moderate sand supply and the flat coastal plains, the updip (highstand) depositional complexes are nearly entirely separated from the downdip (lowstand) shelf-edge deltas and slope fans. Maximum flooding surfaces can be mapped over much of the area and correlated along and across the basin. The Yegua is truly a laboratory for sequence stratigraphy. A number of plays in the downdip and 'mid-dip' (incised valley complexes) trends have produced over 4 TCF of gas and condensate, and new discoveries await the return of exploration capital. The Yegua story is significant to all those interested in siliciclastic stratigraphy in passive-margin settings.

The Ice Age and the Giant Bakken Oil Accumulation

The USGS estimated (2013) that the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian Bakken Formation holds in excess of 7 billion barrels (~1.1 billion m3) of recoverable oil, making it one of the top 50 largest oilfields in the world. Most of the production comes from shallow-marine sandstones of the Middle Bakken Member that are directly over- and underlain by extremely organic-rich shale source rocks (Upper and Lower Bakken Shale members respectively). Although not oil-productive everywhere, the Middle Bakken forms a relatively sheet-like unit that covers an area of over 200,000 square miles (~520,000 km2) of the intracratonic Williston Basin.

The vertical juxtaposition of shallow-marine reservoir and more distal source rocks over such a large area, without intervening transitional facies, is unusual from a stratigraphic perspective. One possible explanation would require global fluctuations of sea level to drive geologically rapid and extensive shoreline movements in this relatively stable basin. Forced regression associated with falling sea level could explain the lack of transitional facies (e.g., inner shelf) between the distal Lower Bakken Shale and the overlying Middle Bakken (a sharp-based shoreface). Subsequent sea-level rise would have caused rapid and extensive transgression, leading to the observed stratigraphic relationships between the Middle and Upper Bakken members. But what could have caused the changes in sea level?

A considerable body of evidence points to a Late Devonian-Early Mississippian ice age that covered portions of Gondwana (e.g., parts of present-day Brazil) that were situated close to the paleo South Pole. This ice age consisted of more than one glacial/interglacial cycle and was probably triggered by massive removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by land plants and organic-rich shales. Some evidence indicates that at least 100 m of sea-level drop took place during one of the Famennian glaciations, which would have effectively drained the Williston Basin and induced major shoreline progradation. Melting of the ice sheets would have caused transgression and reflooding of the basin and deposition of the Upper Bakken Shale. Other basins around the world record similar evidence for glacioeustacy near the Devonian-Mississippian transition. The glacial/interglacial cycles are expressed differently from basin to basin, reflecting the interplay between fluctuations of global sea level and each basin’s history of subsidence and sediment supply.

Five Things Geophysicists Should Know About Shale Plays

The Shale Revolution caught geophysicists off guard. Shales had been studied for a variety of reasons (e.g., relationships between velocity, compaction and pore pressure) but not as low-porosity reservoirs that show vertical heterogeneity at all possible scales. Consequently, many geophysicists have framed shale-play imaging problems using inappropriate tools and paradigms. In this presentation, I present five characteristics of shale plays that should enable improved geophysical analyses.

1. The term “shale play” has become meaningless. Originally intended to describe gas production from fine-grained source rocks (“source-rock reservoirs”), the term is now applied almost indiscriminately to production from many types of low-permeability rock (e.g., shaly sandstones, carbonates).
2. Source-rock reservoirs aren’t clay dominated. Hydraulic fracturing is needed to establish commercial production from these rocks. Clays make the rocks ductile and harder to fracture. As such, the clay content of shale plays is generally less than 50%. The remainder of the rock is usually composed of fine-grained calcite and/or quartz, organic matter and other minerals.
3. Links between VTI anisotropy and clay or organic content are not straightforward in source-rock reservoirs. Scanning electron microscopy often reveals textures that are incompatible with the conceptual models used to develop mathematical models of shales.
4. HTI anisotropy is complicated by natural fracture geometries. Aligned natural fractures generally combine with bedding to produce systems that are best described as orthorhombic. In some cases, multiple fracture orientations produce systems that are effectively isotropic.
5. Integration of geophysical and geological data and concepts is needed to significantly advance geophysical research on shale reservoirs. This effort will allow geophysicists to define, for a specific shale, which assumptions are reasonable, which analogs are appropriate, what appropriate ranges of properties are, etc.

Rock-Eval hydrogen index (HI) is often used to compare relative maturities of a source horizon across a basin. Usually, there are several measurements from the source horizon at a single well, and the mean hydrogen index is calculated, or the S2 is plotted against TOC. The slope of the best fit line through that data is used as the representative HI for that well (sometimes referred to as the ‘slope HI ’ methodology). There is a potential flaw in both these methodologies; however, that renders the calculated HI as misleading if the source horizon being examined is not relatively uniform in source quality, vertically in the stratigraphic column. From a geologic perspective, it would be unusual for the source rock quality not to vary vertically in the stratigraphic column. Organic matter input, preservation, dilution, and sediment accumulation rate typically vary in many depositional environments over the millions of years required to create a thick source rock package. Nevertheless, there are source rocks which do display remarkable source-quality uniformity from top to bottom of the stratigraphic package. We have examined source rocks from several basins where the source quality is relatively uniform over the stratigraphic column, and source rocks where the source quality varies greatly over the stratigraphic column. Methodologies to assess hydrogen index at specific wells for the se two scenarios differ. Most geoscientists may not be familiar with why a single technique is not suitable for both these scenarios, or how to correctly use hydrogen index as a relative maturation proxy in the case where source rock quality is not uniform. We will demonstrate how to determine if your source rock quality is uniform or varied relative to HI over the stratigraphic column, and how to assign a hydrogen index to the different source facies when that source rock quality is not uniform. Further we will illustrate how to estimate the original hydrogen index of the different source facies and assign each a transformation ratio. The transformation ratio is a better proxy for relative maturity, since different source facies may have different present-day hydrogen indices, but their present-day transformation ratio should be quite similar.