AAPG Bulletin, V. 83  (1999), No. 2 (February 1999), P. 277-294.

Reevaluation of the Hovey Channel in the Delaware Basin, West Texas ¹

Carol A. Hill²
 

©Copyright 1999.  The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.  All Rights Reserved
 

¹Manuscript received May 12, 1997; revised manuscript received May 28, 1998; final acceptance July 19, 1998.
²Consulting Geologist, 17 El Arco Drive, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87123; e-mail: [email protected]

I thank the following people for help received on this project: Fred Behnken, Bill Fitchen, John Hawley, Chuck Heywood, Randy Keller, Cyndi Mosch, David Rohr, Shannon Rudine, Bruce Wardlaw, and Garner Wilde. I also thank the Midland Energy Library for supplying oil well logs. 

ABSTRACT

New evidence calls for a reevaluation of the Hovey channel, Glass Mountains, west Texas, as being the inlet for water into the Delaware basin during the Guadalupian (Permian). The new evidence includes the following information.

(1) The upper Cathedral Mountain, Road Can yon, and Word formations of Permian (upper Leonardian, during Road Canyon deposition, and lower Guadalupian) age in the Glass Mountains are now considered to be shallow-marine, fan-delta to lagoonal deposits rather than deep-water, basinal deposits.

(2) The Permian (Ochoan) Tessey Limestone in the Glass Mountains, at least in part, is a bioepigenetic limestone that formed as a replacement of anhydrite in the middle Tertiary. The Tessey is not a deep-water, marine, limestone facies that demarked the position of the Hovey channel.

(3) The location of the Capitan reef in the Salt basin is unknown. One possible interpretation of the "missing" Capitan is that it was never deposited in the area of the Salt basin because an open channel existed there instead.

(4) Isostatic gravity anomaly maps of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas show a "channel" entering the Delaware basin on its southwest, Salt basin, side. This may have been the inlet to the Delaware basin in the Late Permian; I suggest that it be called the Diablo channel.