Lithologic characteristics, depositional environments and geometries of reservoir and nonreservoir facies in the Queen Formation (Guadalupian, Permian) of Moose and Virey Fields, Midland County, Texas
Date
1999
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Texas A&M University
Abstract
The Queen Formation is a member of the Artesia Group, which is a sequence of intermingling carbonates, classics and evaporates that were deposited during Guadalupian (Permian) time across the Northwest Shelf, Central Basin Platform, and Midland Basin of the Permian Basin, west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. In Moose and Virey Fields, the Queen is the main producing formation and consists entirely of intercepted back-reef shelf elastics and evaporates which were deposited in a variety of continental desert and marginal marine settings. The Queen desert was a broad and generally low-relief surface transected by warm temperatures, semi-arid climate, scarce vegetation, and alternating periods of dryness and intense storm-induced flashflooding. Sedimentation within the Queen desert took place in six separate depositional environments. The elastics of Moose and Virey Fields were deposited in proximal fluvial sandflat and fluvial-dominated sabra environments, and along the edge of a shallow hypersaline lagoon. The anhydrides (formerly gypsum) were precipitated subaqueously on the floor of and in the subsurface beneath a broad and shallow, hypersaline lagoon which was characterized by poor circulation and restriction from the normal marine environment. Some halides formed subaqueously in a large, but very shallow, isolated inland saliva situated in the topographic lows of the desert sabkha. Other halides formed in an ephemeral and sometimes desiccated salt-pan environment which was subjected to alternating 'wet' and 'dry' conditions. It is believed that the progression of depositional environments across the study area was in part controlled by fourth- and fifth-order relative sea level fluctuations during a major third-order marine regression. Two large subsurface structural collapse features with at least 200 feet of vertical relief are located in the central portions of Moose and Virey Fields. The collapse of the Queen Formation in these areas was induced by the post-depositional and post-burial dissolution of the halides primarily of the underlying Grayburg Formation, and to a lesser extent of the Queen Formation. It apparently occurred as a series of minor collapse events which first began in Post-oueen Guadalupian time, during deposition of the lower Seven Rivers Formation, and finally ended in the Ochoan during deposition of the Rustler Anhydrite.
Description
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-165).
Issued also on microfiche from Lange Micrographics.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-165).
Issued also on microfiche from Lange Micrographics.
Keywords
geology., Major geology.