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Abstract

Diggs, T. N., 2007, An outcrop study of clastic injection structures in the Carboniferous Tesnus Formation, Marathon basin, Trans-Pecos Texas, in A. Hurst and J. Cartwright, eds., Sand injectites: Implications for hydrocarbon exploration and production: AAPG Memoir 87, p. 209-219.

DOI:10.1306/1209864M873266

Copyright copy2007 by The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

An Outcrop Study of Clastic Injection Structures in the Carboniferous Tesnus Formation, Marathon Basin, Trans-Pecos Texas

Timothy N. Diggs1

1Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, U.S.A.; present address: Shell International EP, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

William Donnell and G. Q. Salmon and Sons are kindly acknowledged for providing access to their properties. Financial assistance was provided by Superior Oil Company and the Owen-Coates Fund of the Geology Foundation at the University of Texas at Austin. Editorial comments from Andrew Hurst, Pieter van Rensbergen, E. F. McBride, and Peter Tauvers improved this paper, but all interpretations are the responsibility of the author. Andrew Hurst and Beverly Molyneux are especially acknowledged for their editorial efforts in assembling this volume.

ABSTRACT

The Carboniferous Tesnus Formation in the Marathon basin of west Texas was deposited as a large submarine-fan complex in a tectonically active, migrating foredeep. Primary depositional fabrics in siliciclastic mass-flow deposits of the Tesnus Formation were extensively modified during intense soft-sediment deformation. Fluidization and clastic intrusion were common processes and produced clastic injection structures possessing a remarkable array of shapes and orientations with respect to bedding. The most commonly recognized intrusive bodies are dikes, which were nonsystematically injected into overlying host sediments at angles ranging from just greater than 0–90deg. Dike orientations, corrected for tectonic deformation, show no correlation with paleoslope or later structural trends and, based on traditional decompaction methods, are interpreted to have been injected at relatively shallow burial depths (tens to hundreds of meters). Clastic sills are nearly as common as dikes and, based on their generally greater thickness, are interpreted to have been responsible for accommodating a greater proportion of postdepositional sediment remobilization than any other type of intrusion. Other, more unusual clastic injection structures in the Tesnus include concordant and discordant cylindrical clastic pipes; irregularly shaped, wavelike intrusions in which one surface is concordant and the other is discordant; and intrusions that are both concordant and discordant along different parts of the injection body. With clastic dikes and sills as end members, previously undescribed clastic injection structures in the Tesnus Formation define a spectrum of features with geometries transitional between concordance and discordance.

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