Geologic characterization of the Lower Cretaceous upper Travis Peak and Pettet Formations in the Wright Mountain field, Smith County, East Texas basin: Potential reservoir analog for other Travis Peak and Pettet strata

Abstract

The Wright Mountain field in Smith County, Texas, is a tight carbonate reservoir that produces from the Lower Cretaceous Pettet Formation. The Pettet Formation is dominantly made up of cyclic shallow-water shelfal carbonates associated with skeletal oolitic shoal complexes. These shoals are widespread hydrocarbon-reservoir targets, have poor to fair matrix reservoir quality, and are commonly sealed by transgressive argillaceous lime mudstones and wackestones. Complex regional paleotopography has significant impact on the regional distribution of these shoal bodies and overall depositional patterns. This investigation, therefore, aims to characterize the Pettet Formation and underlying fluviodeltaic Travis Peak Formation in the Wright Mountain field, located on the western flank of the Strickland High near the northeastern margin of the East Texas Basin, to assess reservoir parameters and to compare depositional patterns to existing shoal-complex studies centered on the top of the paleohigh in Rusk County. The Pettet section in Smith County consists of three fourth-order sequences (Pettet A–C), each of which shoals upwards into a shallow-water, high-energy environment near or within shoal complexes. The best reservoir lithofacies are the mixed skeletal-ooid and skeletal grainstones, as observed elsewhere in the Pettet Formation in Rusk County. However, texture and biota vary in the Wright Mountain field area as compared to the Rusk County area as there is abundant evidence of reworking and resedimentation in the Wright Mountain field area, suggesting a different depositional setting perhaps related to off-shoal deposition or greater depositional dip. Therefore, this field characterization study is important for constructing a regional depositional model and can be applied as an analog for equivalent systems with similar lithofacies and pore networks elsewhere in the northern Gulf of Mexico.