The Abilene-Nemaha anticline area of northeast Kansas has potential commercial oil possibilities in rocks of Ordovician to Permian ages.

The area is structurally and stratigraphically complex and, in these respects, is one of the most unusual in the state of Kansas. Represented are horsts, grabens, faults, unconformities, and abrupt lithofacies changes.

Within these complex geological phenomena are oil and gas fields in reservoirs of the Simpson, Viola, Hunton, Mississippian, Cherokee, and Permian; oil shows have been recorded in units of other ages. Structural and stratigraphic traps abound, because all units from the Reagan to the Kansas City are truncated or pinch out around the high-relief granite knobs of the Nemaha trend.

Basement tectonics probably has controlled most of the structural movements, including present-day movements along the still-active Nemaha fault. Most isopachous "thicks" correspond in geographic position to the thick Rice Formation of Precambrian age. Conditions during deposition of the Rice set the stage for the creation of subsequent basins and tectonic highs.

Future oil will be found in buried structural highs masked by the unconformities, in cuestas formed by the truncation of successive stratigraphic units around the highs, and in stratigraphic traps caused by the abrupt changes in lithology within individual units.

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