Quartz is an import cementing material in siliciclastic sandstones that can reduce porosity and permeability severely. For efficiently predicting and extrapolating petrophysical properties such as porosity and permeability, the controls on the occurrence and the degree of quartz cementation need to be better understood. Toward this end, a succession of Cambrian marine quartz arenites in Lithuania, at a present burial depth ranging from about 1 to 2 km, has been studied. In the central part of the Baltic Basin these quartz arenites are heavily cemented by quartz and the degree of quartz cementation is the main control on reservoir properties. On a regional Baltic Basin scale, the amount of quartz cement, and inversely the porosity and permeability, are correlated to burial depth and palaeotemperature. Porosity of the sandstones in the Baltic Basin flanks is around 23–28% and decreases toward the west to 15–18% in the central part and to 2–4% in west Lithuania. However, superposed on general trends between petrophysical properties and depth, large variations exist even between closely spaced wells making forward prediction of reservoir quality difficult. Evidently, factors other than general physical conditions and overall chemical conditions related to burial depth must have locally influenced the processes of quartz cementation and controlled the location and amounts of quartz cement. Such local factors are detrital composition, sedimentary structures and reservoir architecture, inherent to depositional facies. Clay-induced chemical compaction and pressure dissolution of detrital quartz at shale–sandstone contacts and within thin shale lamina is probably the main process yielding silica for local quartz cement. The supply of silica for quartz cement in the sandstones is thus dependent on the number of thin clay lamina and clay intercalations within the reservoir sandstones. The sandstone/shale ratio and thickness of sandstone bodies control the location and the degree of quartz cementation and thus reservoir quality.