Habitat of Oil in the Lindsborg Field, Salina Basin, North-Central Kansas

Abstract

The Lindsborg field was discovered in 1938, and is now 14 mi in length and 1-2 mi in width. It has a projected ultimate recovery of 16 MMBO. Three pay zones (5-20 ft thick) produce in the field. The Simpson pay zone (Middle Ordovician) is a well-rounded, quartzitic sandstone that is interpreted to be a paralic, high-energy shelf deposit. The Viola pay (Middle Ordovician) appears to be a dolomitic, lime grainstone but no cores are available to confirm this. The uppermost pay zone, the Upper Ordovician Maquoketa, is a finely laminated, vuggy, cherry dolomite interpreted to have been deposited as a subtidal lime mudstone in a restricted lagoon. The Simpson and Viola pays are structurally trapped in culminations along the crest of the Lindsborg anticline. Although the Maquoketa pay is structurally trapped with the other pay zones in the southern half of the field, its locus of production in the north half of the fields extends 100 ft vertically down the western flank of the anticline. The trapping mechanism is unclear due to lack of core control and modern logging suites, but it may be subtle updip diagenetic change from vuggy to nonvuggy dolomite. The Simpson and Maquoketa oils aremore » geochemically distinct. Both may reflect efficient local source-to-reservoir migration from originally rich but marginally mature Ordovician and Devonian shales that contact each pay zone. If oil in the Lindsborg field is locally generated, the prospectivity of the relatively unproductive and underexplored Salina basin may be enhanced.« less