Lake Arthur field is in T. 10 S., R. 4 W., Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana, just north of the city of Lake Arthur. This field was discovered as a result of the drilling of the Joe Sturdivant No. 1 by the Shell Oil Company in 1937. During World War II and immediately thereafter the principal development of the field took place. The discovery of the "Main Camerina sand" in 1953 initiated the greatest drilling activity in the history of the field, and it became the most important producing sand.

The sediments encountered by wells drilled in the field are all Cenozoic in age, ranging from Recent to Miocene.

Subsurface studies of the field show it to be a deep-seated domal structure, fractured by many normal, down-to-the-basin faults; the complexity of which increases with depth.

It is a combination of the domal uplift and the complex fault patterns that form structural traps for petroleum. Much of the production is from beds on the downthrown side of the faults, where the sands are thicker because of rapid deposition of sediments contemporaneous

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with faulting. The primary example of this is the Main Camerina sand.

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