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AAPG Bulletin

Abstract

AAPG Bulletin, V. 101, No. 1 (January 2017), P. 95-117.

Copyright ©2017. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved. Green Open Access. This paper is published under the terms of the CC-BY license.

DOI: 10.1306/06101615095

Climatic and tectonic controls of lacustrine hyperpycnite origination in the Late Triassic Ordos Basin, central China: Implications for unconventional petroleum development

Renchao Yang,1 Zhijun Jin,2 A. J. (Tom) van Loon,3 Zuozhen Han,4 and Aiping Fan5

1Laboratory for Marine Mineral Resources, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, No. 62 Fuzhounan Road, Qingdao 266071, China; present address: Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Depositional Mineralization and Sedimentary Minerals, Shandong University of Science and Technology, No. 579 Qianwangang Road, Qingdao, Shandong Province 266590, China; [email protected]
2Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Production, China Petro-Chemical Corporation, No. 31 Xueyuan Road, Beijing 100083, China; [email protected]
3Institute of Geology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Maków Polnych 16, 61-606 Poznan, Poland; [email protected]
4Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Depositional Mineralization and Sedimentary Minerals, Shandong University of Science and Technology, No. 579 Qianwangang Road, Qingdao, Shandong Province 266590, China; [email protected]
5Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Depositional Mineralization and Sedimentary Minerals, Shandong University of Science and Technology, No. 579 Qianwangang Road, Qingdao, Shandong Province 266590, China; [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The Triassic Yanchang Formation contains the main oil-bearing strata in the Ordos Basin, central China. But the sedimentology of the Upper Triassic is still under debate, and flood-generated, hyperpycnal-flow deposits and their implications for unconventional petroleum development have long been overlooked. Our study indicates that hyperpycnites are well developed in the seventh oil member of the Yanchang Formation. They are characterized by couplets of upward-coarsening intervals and upward-fining intervals, separated by microscale erosion surfaces. The origination of hyperpycnal flows was controlled mainly by episodic tectonic movements and the humid climate. The deposits extend from distributary estuaries into the deep lake, have intercalations of dark shales and tuffs, and coexist with debrites and turbidites as a result of the progradation of subaqueous fans. The hyperpycnites have implications for unconventional petroleum reservoirs, because the flows supplied not only large amounts of coarse grains and organic material to the deep-water, fine-grained central lake sediments but also affected the ecosystems, resulting in a higher total organic carbon content in the sediments.

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