Deep gas well encounters ultramafic kimberlite-like material in the Sauk Sequence of southeastern Ohio, USA

Abstract

The first indication of a potential deep-subsurface kimberlite-like material in the Appalachian Basin, without surface expression, has been discovered in oil and gas well drilling samples from a deep well drilled near Zanesville, Ohio, USA. The well was drilled into the Cambrian Sauk Sequence within a localized fault-bounded graben, where a zone of ultramafic rocks was encountered. The zone of ultramafic rocks is within Sauk carbonates at 1720 m below sea level and is not highly anomalous on geophysical wire-line well logs. Petrographic analyses of grain-mounted samples show a 20 m zone of ultramafic rock material near the top of the Conasauga Group. Well cuttings from the ultramafic zone include relatively fresh phenocrysts of phlogopite with calcite, apatite, and titaniferous magnetite, in a secondary matrix of amphibole, chlorite, Fe-oxides, and possibly serpentine. The rocks have undergone deuteric alteration and probably later hydrothermal alteration. A 20-m-thick, localized, natural gas–bearing sandstone unconformably overlies (Knox unconformity) the Sauk Sequence above the ultramafic zone. Structural mapping indicates that the localized sandstone is confined to a small seismic-defined graben originating in the faulted Precambrian Grenville basement complex. Mapping of newly acquired gravity and magnetic data does not indicate the presence of an anomaly coincident with the graben, suggesting that the ultramafic material must be a very small, localized intrusive body (pipe or diatreme). Alternative interpretations include a thin intrusive sill, extrusive tuff deposits, Grenville-aged tectonic fault slice, or eroded igneous deposits. Subsurface mapping of units above the Sauk Sequence (Ordovician Black River Group–Trenton Limestone) shows no significant variation in structural contours above the feature. Although the igneous material has not been isotopically dated, the stratigraphic position suggests that it was intruded prior to Middle Ordovician time.