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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Special Volumes
Abstract
Mitch
Harris, and G. P. Eberli
2004. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
An Upper Mississippian Carbonate Ramp System from the Pedregosa Basin, Southwestern New Mexico, U.S.A.: An Outcrop Analog for Middle Carboniferous Carbonate Reservoirs
David J. Sivils
Fasken Oil and Ranch, Ltd., Midland, Texas, U.S.A.; Current affiliation: Tom Brown, Inc., Midland, Texas, U.S.A.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the editors for the invitation and opportunity to contribute to this volume. This manuscript is in part derived from the author's Ph.D. dissertation completed at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. The author would like to thank Tom Brown, Inc. for permission to publish this work, Emily Stoudt of Texaco Exploration and Production for comments and suggestions from an early draft of this manuscript, and comments from AAPG reviewers Mitch Harris and Mike Grammer, Rick Abegg, and Terry Belsher for improving this manuscript. The author also would like to thank Frank E. Kottlowski, teacher, mentor, peer, and friend, for the numerous discussions regarding the Paradise Formation, the Pedregosa Basin, and New Mexico geology. You will be missed.
ABSTRACT
The Paradise Formation (Chesterian) of southwestern New Mexico records sedimentation during the latest Mississippian. The Paradise reaches its maximum thickness of 130 m in the Big Hatchet Mountains. The stratigraphic interval is divided into three informal members, each of which is composed of eight distinctive lithofacies arranged in meter-scale carbonate-clastic cycles that range in thickness from 2 to 12 m. Cycles begin with deeper-water shale and/or lime mudstones and culminate in either skeletal or oolitic grainstones, indicating deposition in shallowing water. Some of these cycles are capped with siltstones or fine-grained sandstones. The thickness and vertical lithofacies development were controlled by changes in relative sea level. These meter-scale cycles have a maximum average duration of about 400 k.y. These high-frequency cycles are grouped into composite cycle sets that correspond to fourth-order sequences and are similar to coeval upper Mississippian carbonate sequences described in North America and Great Britain. These similarities with middle Carboniferous carbonate sequences around the globe, combined with icehouse climatic conditions that existed during the upper Mississippian, suggest that sedimentation during the upper Mississippian in the Pedregosa Basin, as well as worldwide, was primarily controlled by glacioeustatic changes.
Carbonate grainstones, grain-rich packstones, and sandstones are all potential
reservoir facies. The vertical thickness of the grainstones is typically no more than 2 m. Laterally, these facies are traceable for several kilometers in both the strike and dip directions. Low-permeability lime mudstones, wackestones, and shales are the nonreservoir facies and act as the primary sealing facies in both vertical and lateral directions. The overall stacking of reservoirs and seals in this manner results in a series of stacked reservoirs that would behave as separate, individual flow units.
The upper Mississippian Paradise Formation in the Pedregosa Basin is an outcrop analog for subsurface reservoirs of a similar age for modeling depositional systems, patterns of cyclic sedimentation, as well as for reservoir geometry, and diagenetic controls on reservoir development related to the enhancement or degradation, primarily from meteoric waters. The Paradise may best serve as an analog for Chesterian reservoirs in the Illinois Basin, Hugoton Embayment, and Williston Basin. In addition to these basins, the Paradise is suitable as an outcrop analog for a wide variety of carbonate reservoirs deposited on ramp systems during icehouse climatic conditions.
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