Abstract

The Mississippi Valley Gas, #1 Terry Bell was drilled as a stratigraphic test hole in Section 18, Township 17 North, Range 9 West, Washington County, Mississippi. It was plugged and abandoned in May, 1964, after reaching a total depth of 5,156 feet and recovering 390 feet of diamond cores from twelve intervals (3,963 feet to 5,100 feet). Three drill stem tests were conducted (3,968'-4,025', 4,687'-4,746', and 4,827'-4,886'), but only salt-water and salt-water cut mud were recovered.

Regionally, the test hole was situated along the northern edge of the Monroe-Sharkey Uplift, in an igneous province originally defined by gravity surveys in the 1930's. The cores contained numerous intervals of extrusive igneous rocks and zones with contact metamorphism that have altered the enclosing formations, thereby making stratigraphic correlations with wells in the region extremely difficult. Petrographic work in the 1970's classified several of these igneous intervals as phonolite (between 4,019 feet and 4,289 feet), but a detailed analysis was not undertaken and stratigraphic correlations remained problematic. In the late 1990's, a petrographic analysis of all twelve cores was conducted and the entire section interpreted as Eagle Mills, Norphlet, Smackover and Haynesville formations unconformably overlain by Late Cretaceous through Holocene deposits. The synorogenic nature of the Triassic and Jurassic sections in the Terry Bell well indicates conditions were ideal for stratigraphic pinchouts and combination structural-stratigraphic traps on the northern flanks of the Monroe-Sharkey Uplift.