Sedimentology, Petrology, and Reservoir Characteristics of Lower Strawn Sandstone, Bent Tree Field, Hardeman County, Texas

Thomas R. Moore, Kenneth F. Bridges

Reservoir sandstones of the lower Strawn Formation (early Middle Pennsylvanian) in the Bent Tree field of Hardeman County, Texas, are coarse to fine-grained, texturally submature arkoses. Cores show the sandstones to have been deposited in 1.5-4.5 m thick fining-upward successions of aggraded or prograded bar units. Each bar unit has a sharp erosional base overlain by cross-bedded, coarse-grained, conglomeratic sandstone, which, in turn, is overlain by medium to fine-grained, horizontally bedded or ripple-bedded sandstone. The coarse conglomeratic sandstones are interpreted to represent deposition in main channels of a braided fluvial system that were progressively filled by aggrading and prograding bars. The interbedded, finer grained, more immature sandstones appear to have been dep sited in auxiliary channels or swales, or in proximal overbank settings.

The detrital framework grain suite of the reservoir sandstones averages 47% quartz, 30% feldspars, 19% igneous rock fragments, and 4% sedimentary rock fragments. The source of these sands was a plutonic/cratonic igneous massif with minor exposures of older sedimentary strata, and was probably the ancestral Wichita Mountains. Diagenesis has significantly affected the petrographic and reservoir properties of the lower Strawn sandstones, primarily through the in-situ alteration of detrital feldspathic grains and by the precipitation of authigenic quartz overgrowths, chlorite clay, and carbonate cements.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91039©1987 AAPG Mid-Continent Section Meeting, Tulsa, Oklahoma, September 27-29, 1987.