AAPG Studies in Geology No. 50, (Section Title: The Ferron Sandstone -- Overview and Reservoir Analog) Chapter 3: Facies of the Ferron Sandstone, East-Central Utah, by Thomas A. Ryer and Paul B. Anderson, Pages 59 - 78
from:
AAPG Studies in Geology No. 50: Regional to Wellbore Analog for Fluvial-Deltaic Reservoir Modeling: The Ferron Sandstone of Utah, Edited by Thomas C. Chidsey, Jr., Roy D. Adams, and Thomas H. Morris
Copyright © 2004 by The American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. All rights reserved.

The Ferron Sandstone --
Overview and Reservoir Analog

Chapter 3:
Facies of the Ferron Sandstone, East-Central Utah

Thomas A. Ryer¹ and Paul B. Anderson²
1The ARIES Group, Inc., Katy, Texas
²Consulting Geologist, Salt Lake City, Utah

ABSTRACT

The Upper Cretaceous Ferron Sandstone represents a spectrum of depositional environments and facies spanning offshore marine to alluvial plain. Because they are very well exposed, are readily accessible, and have been extensively studied, these deposits serve as excellent analogs for many oil and gas reservoirs. Sediment was delivered to the Ferron depositional system by eastward- to northward-flowing rivers represented by sandy channelbelts. The rivers were generally meandering, although some were lower-sinuosity streams. Flood basins adjacent to the channelbelts accumulated predominantly muddy sediment, sandy crevasse-splay deposits, and, locally, peat. Peat accumulated in belts that roughly correspond to the lower part of the coastal plain and generally paralleled the shoreline. The geometries of individual, thick bodies of coal vary greatly. The dynamics of peat accumulation was controlled primarily by the rate of relative sea level rise.