Relationship Among Depositional Environment, Burial History, and Reservoir Quality in Kekiktuk Fan Delta System (Mississippian Endicott Group), North Slope of Alaska

S. Bloch, J. H. McGowen, J. R. Duncan, D. W. Brizzolara

The Kekiktuk Formation is a fan delta-swamp-flood basin system that accumulated under an early progradational regime and a late aggradational regime. Component facies of the progradational regime are swamp, flood basin (lacustrine), prodelta, delta front, low-sinuousity fluvial, distal fan delta, and splay. Facies that accumulated under aggradational regime are braided stream, abandoned channel, and swamp.

The reservoir quality of the Kekiktuk is the result of the depositional texture of the sandstone and burial history. The detrital mineralogy is relatively uniform. In texturally similar sandstones, burial history affects in a predictable way present-day reservoir quality by controlling the extent of pressure solution. A relationship among reservoir quality, facies, and burial history was established in an area with well control and used successfully to predict porosity-permeability in a wildcat well prior to drilling. The prediction was based on burial history curves interpreted from seismic-stratigraphic analysis used in conjunction with facies and petrographic interpretations.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91030©1988 AAPG Annual Convention, Houston, Texas, 20-23 March 1988.