About This Item

Share This Item

The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 68 (1984)

Issue: 4. (April)

First Page: 504

Last Page: 505

Title: Provenance and Diagenesis of Ivishak Sandstone, Northern Alaska: ABSTRACT

Author(s): James M. Mazzullo, Gary K. Burch

Abstract:

The Ivishak sandstone of northern Alaska is a regressive sequence of Lower Triassic fluvial and paralic deposits that constitutes an important hydrocarbon reservoir in the Prudhoe Bay area. A petrographic study of the formation, utilizing samples from wells from both reservoir and non-reservoir rocks, was undertaken to determine the provenance and diagenetic histories of the formation.

The Ivishak sandstone can be characterized as a low-rank or lithic graywacke. The major detrital species it contains include: (a) quartz (46%), dominantly reworked sedimentary and volcanic monocrystalline quartz and metamorphic polycrystalline quartz; (b) chert (22%), containing variable amounts of inclusions (clay and carbonate); (c) sedimentary rock fragments (10%), largely mudstones and silty mudstones; and (d) metamorphic

End_Page 504------------------------------

rock fragments (4%), mostly slate and phyllite. Feldspars are conspicuously absent in the sandstone. This detrital suite, and the overall decrease to the southwest in the grain size of the sandstone, indicate that the sands of the formation were derived from a northern landmass, exposed in the Late Permian and Early Triassic, which consisted of Precambrian schists and quartzites overlain by early Paleozoic marine sandstones and deep-water cherts and argillites.

After deposition, the reservoir facies of the Ivishak sandstone underwent 4 consecutive diagenetic phases: (1) early carbonate cementation that prevented mechanical compaction, (2) dissolution of pore-filling carbonate and carbonate inclusions within chert grains, (3) precipitation of quartz as overgrowths, and (4) precipitation of authigenic kaolinite. At present, the intergranular porosity of the formation is high, averaging 11.5%, and is present in the forms of elongate and oversized secondary pores. Porosity also occurs as micropores associated with leached chert grains and with the kaolinite. In the more matrix-rich nonreservoir facies of the Ivishak, the clay matrix prevented complete carbonate cementation which allowed for greater mechanical compaction of the sandstones; in som places, this mechanical compaction, coupled with the precipitation of quartz overgrowths, reduced porosity to irreducible levels.

End_of_Article - Last_Page 505------------

Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists