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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 69 (1985)

Issue: 2. (February)

First Page: 248

Last Page: 248

Title: Wrenching and Oil Migration, Mervine Field, Kay County, Oklahoma: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Harold G. Davis

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

Since 1913, Mervine field (T27N, R3E) has produced oil from 11 Mississippian and Pennsylvanian zones, and gas from 2 Permian zones. The field exhibits an impressive asymmetric surface anticline, with the steeper flank dipping 30°E maximum. A nearly vertical, basement-involved fault develops immediately beneath the steeper flank of the surface anticline. Three periods of left-lateral wrench faulting account for 93% of all structural growth: 24% in post-Mississippian-pre-Desmoinesian time, 21% in Virgilian time, and 48% in post-Wolfcampian time.

In Mesozoic through early Cenozoic times, the Devonian Woodford Shale (and possibly the Desmoinesian Cherokee shales) locally generated oil, which should have been structurally trapped in the Ordovician Bromide sandstone. This oil may have joined oil already trapped in the Bromide, which had migrated to the Mervine area in the Early Pennsylvanian from a distant source. Intense post-Wolfcampian movement(s) fractured the competent pre-Pennsylvanian rocks, allowing Bromide brine and entrained oil to migrate vertically up the master fault, finally accumulating in younger reservoirs.

Pressure, temperature, and salinity anomalies attest to vertical fluid migration continuing at the present time at Mervine field. Consequently, pressure, temperature, and salinity mapping should be considered as valuable supplements to structural and lithologic mapping when prospecting for structural hydrocarbon accumulations in epicratonic provinces.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists