AAPG Bulletin, V. 83 (1999), No. 6 (June 1999), P. 898-924.

Upper Miocene Stevens Sandstone, San Joaquin Basin, California: Reinterpretation of a Petroliferous, Sand-Rich, Deep-Sea Depositional System¹

C. P. Harrison² and S. A. Graham³
 

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

¹Manuscript received June 9, 1997; revised manuscript received November 17, 1998; final acceptance December 8, 1998.
²Pennzoil Exploration and Production Company, Houston, Texas 77002; e-mail: [email protected]
³Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305; e-mail: [email protected]

This research was supported by the corporate members of the Stanford Petroleum Geology Industrial Affiliates Program (San Joaquin Project) and the Stanford Program on Deep-Sea Depositional Systems. Subsurface data for this study, as well as consent to publish selected data, were generously provided by Chevron USA, ARCO Oil and Gas, and Enron Oil and Gas Company. Russ Robinson facilitated access to cores at the California Well Repository in Bakersfield. We are especially grateful to Michael Clark, Dennis Giovannetti, and William Kempner for their time, support, and geologic insight, and to William Bazeley, Timothy Garfield, D. Bradford Macurda, and Richard Stanley for thoughtful manuscript reviews. 

ABSTRACT

Deep-marine sands of the upper Miocene Stevens sandstone, one of the most important hydrocarbon-producing units in the United States, were deposited by sediment-gravity flows in the Bakersfield arch area of the southern San Joaquin basin. The Stevens sandstone historically has been considered to be a thick turbidite succession shed off the southern Sierra Nevada as four fans in a long-lived submarine fan system fed in large part by several large submarine canyons. Access to previously unavailable proprietary two-dimensional and three-dimensional seismic data sets, carefully calibrated by well-log and core data, permits a more complete understanding of the depositional architecture of this highly petroliferous, deep-marine depositional system. We conclude that these units were deposited in a structurally controlled, sand-rich deep-sea system, which was fed by a delta system that lacked major submarine canyons. The uppermost sand unit, the upper Stevens sandstone, developed as a deep-sea braid plain in the area of the present Bakersfield arch. Within the braid plain, curvilinear features detected on horizon slices through a three-dimensional seismic data cube are interpreted as braided channel-form deposits. Hydrocarbon production established along these linear trends may reflect improved reservoir quality localized by channel sedimentary processes.