ABSTRACT

The Ouachita Mountains offer a rare opportunity for oil and gas exploration in a frontier area. To date, drilling has been so limited as to prove meaningless for subsurface exploration. Due to the continuing need to develop new areas of production in our country, this area provides a rare opportunity to examine various techniques, criteria, indicators, and even hunches using only foresight without the benefit of hindsight in assuming this area will be productive of oil and gas. Time will tell if these predictions come true.

Geological studies of this area will focus on several criteria that one would look for in exploring a new province.

1. A sedimentary column that in its entirety exceeds 50,000 ft (15,240 m) in thickness.
2. Numerous oil seeps, gas shows and residual asphaltic deposits.
3. In the stratigraphic column there are numerous source beds, reservoir beds and seals.
4. The potential for various trapping mechanics exist in the form of structure, faulting, stratigraphic traps, and reefing in Ordivician carbonates under the overthrust.
5. A recent north-south seismic line published in AAPG, and well documented, shows definite stratification of beds across the entire thrust area.
6. Landsat interpretation is perhaps the newest method of promise in getting leads in frontier areas. Landsat maps show areas of structural and tonal anomalies.

Within the next five to ten years an extensive and expensive exploration effort will occur in this area. Only then after the bit has probed the subsurface will this story be concluded.

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