Prolific Overton Field Gas Reservoirs Within Large Transverse Oolite Shoals, Upper Jurassic Haynesville, Eastern Margin East Texas Basin: ABSTRACT

Abstract

Late Triassic rifting along a northeast-southwest spreading center in east Texas resulted in basement highs along the eastern margin of the East Texas basin that became sites of extensive ooid shoal deposition during Late Jurassic time. Reservoirs within oolite facies at Overton field contain over 1 tcf of natural gas. These large shoals, each approximately 15 mi (24 km) long and 3 mi (4.8 km) wide, trend north-south as a group and northeast-southwest individually. They are oblique to the basin margin but parallel with Jurassic diffracted tidal currents within the East Texas embayment. Modern Bahamian ooid shoals of similar size, trend, and depositional setting occur at the terminus of the deep Tongue-Of-The-Ocean platform reentrant. Overton field reservoirs are in ooid g ainstone shoal facies and in transitional shoal margins of skeletal-oolitic-peloidal grainstones and packstones. Adjacent nonreservoir facies are peloidal-skeletal-siliciclastic wackestones and mudstones. Early diagenesis of grainstone reservoir facies included meteoric dissolution and grain stabilization, resulting in abundant chalky intraparticle porosity and equant and bladed calcite cements filling interparticle porosity. Subsequent burial diagenesis resulted in intense solution compaction and coarse equant calcite and saddle crystal dolomite that occluded remaining interparticle porosity. Whole-rock trace element analysis indicates greatest diagenetic flushing (less magnesium, strontium) in porous zones. Stable isotopes for grains and cements show strong overprint of later burial diagenesis, with greater depletion of ^dgr18O in reservoir facies. However, hydrocarbons were emplaced prior to late cementation, and unlike other Jurassic Gulf Coast reservoirs, deep burial iagenesis provided no late-stage formation of porosity. End_of_Article - Last_Page 257------------