Rival Producing Trends in Burke County, North Dakota

EISEL, JACOB D., Eisel Oil Inc., Lafayette, CO, and MICHAEL L. HENDRICKS, Hendricks and Associates, Inc., Denver, CO

The Rival beds are a shallowing-upward limestone to evaporite sequence in Burke County, North Dakota. Rival oil production in this part of the basin occurs from shoreline carbonates and pod-shaped algal banks which developed basinward of shorelines.

Shoreline carbonates are predominantly grainstones which produce in Rival and Foothills fields. Porosity is intergranular and vuggy. The updip trap facies in these shoreline trends is anhydrite. Occluding cements are anhydrite, baroque dolomite, and prismatic calcite spar. Cumulative oil production is over 13 million bbl in the Rival field, where good porosity, permeability, and an effective trap are present.

Algal bank sediments are productive in Black Slough, Tioga, and North Tioga fields. Peloidal, skeletal, and algal packstones and grainstones in these fields contain intergranular, moldic, and vuggy porosity. Occluding cements are fibrous calcite, prismatic calcite spar, and baroque dolomite. Impermeable mudstones and wackestone surround the algal banks and constitute the trap facies. Rival oil production from the Tioga fields along the Nesson anticline is over 14 million bbl.

Rival potential exists for both shoreline and algal bank plays in the southern and western portions of Burke County, where depositional trends cross well-defined paleostructural features.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91010©1991 AAPG Rocky Mountain Section Meeting, Billings, Montana, July 28-31, 1991 (2009)