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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

GCAGS Transactions

Abstract


Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Transactions
Vol. 37 (1987), Pages 255-262

Regional Stratigraphy of the Smackover Limestone (Jurassic) in South Arkansas and North Louisiana, and the Geology of Chalybeat Springs Oil Field

Arthur R. Troell (1), J. D. Robinson (2)

ABSTRACT

This stratigraphic and structural study of oil fields in South Arkansas and North Louisiana demonstrates the existence of at least four progradational calcarenite rock bodies or banks within the Smackover Formation of Jurassic Age. Each bank was deposited approximately parallel to the ancestral Gulf shoreline and basinward of the next older bank. All of these banks are major reservoirs for oil and gas pools.

Prior to 1960, the Reynolds Oolite of the Smackover Formation of South Arkansas was correlated with the Smackover "B" Oolite of North Louisiana. The absence of anticlines with structural closure and the paucity of untested fault closures along the Arkansas-Louisiana state boundary produced little exploratory interest in the area. Discovery of oil at Lick Creek Field in 1960 and at Walker Creek in 1968 revealed a trend of traps and led to the geological investigation that resulted in the discovery in 1972 of Chalybeat Springs Field in Columbia County, Arkansas.

Chalybeat Springs Field is a combination stratigraphic-structural trap in oolitic calcarenite at a depth of 10,250 feet in the Smackover "B" Limestone. The production is limited by the combination of a tilted anticline with porosity pinchout on its flank. The field originally had 28 producing wells and lO dryholes and covered approximately 4,500 productive acres. Original oil in place is estimated to have been 37 million barrels and cumulative production through 1985 was approximately 12 million barrels.

The geologic relationships and principles observed in the Smackover Limestone of South Arkansas and North Louisiana can and have been successfully applied to other regions and in different aged carbonate strata in the geologic search for oil and gas production.

Practical geologic studies of carbonate rocks aided by examination of drill cuttings, cores and thin sections combined with mechanical log evaluations result in lower finding costs for oil and gas reserves.


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