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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
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The oil and gas reservoir rocks of the Upper Devonian of West Virginia were deposited as shoreline sands along a coastal plain characterized by marine-dominant deltas (Catskill delta complex). The oil-bearing sandstones occur in strike trend (north-south) in north-central West Virginia connected by feeder channel sandstones with dip trends (east-west). In outcrop, the strike-trending sandstones contain occasional marine fossils, are well sorted, and exhibit sedimentary structures that suggest depositional environments ranging from shoreface to tidal delta and back barrier. Channel sandstones with herringbone bedding suggest tidal influence. These beds change to cross-bedding of unidirectional paleoflow origin in upstream fluvial counterparts of red-bed facies. The interpr ted fluvial and tidal channels combine to represent distributary channels that supplied the sands to the barrier islands and delta front. Isolith maps show anastomosing belts trending east-west with both vertical and offset stacking. Stream avulsion and stream piracy probably account for lateral shifting of tidally influenced river distributaries. Gridlike patterns of sandstone belts result from the dynamic interference of tidal-fluvial channels with wave-constructed shoreline barrier islands and bars, complicated by onlap and offlap cycles. Subsurface informally named oil and gas sands generally are multiple sandstones. Detailed correlation of individual sand units is difficult, but it supports the interpretation of a combined influence of wave and tidal-fluvial processes.
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