--> Abstract: Lithostratigraphy and Petroleum Prospects in Sauk Sequence, Eastern- and Southeastern New York, by B. Guo, J. E. Sanders, and G. M. Friedman; #91013 (1992).

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ABSTRACT: Lithostratigraphy and Petroleum Prospects in Sauk Sequence, Eastern- and Southeastern New York

GUO, B., Northeastern Science Foundation, City University of New York, Troy, NY, J. E. SANDERS, Hofstra University and Northeastern Science Foundation, Hempstead, NY, and GERALD M. FRIEDMAN, Brooklyn College and Graduate School, City University of New York, and Northeastern Science Foundation, Troy, NY

Two significant borings: (1) Crom-Wells No. 1 Fee, near Middletown, Orange County (originally drilled with cable tools to a total depth of 6470 ft in 1953 and deepened in 1971 to 6865 ft) and (2) Columbia Gas Company No. 1 Finnegan boring, Easton, Washington County (rotary drilled in 1983 to a total depth of 7758 ft) found gas shows and provide new subsurface data about the Sauk Sequence. The Finnegan boring is situated on the western part and the Fee boring in the central part of the carbonate shelf (Cambrian-Early Ordovician) on which the Sauk Sequence was deposited. We have carried out a detailed study of well cuttings, of thin sections made from selected chips, of logs, and of regional stratigraphic relationships.

The Crom-Wells No. 1 Fee cut 4720 ft of the Tippecanoe Sequence and 2145 ft of the Sauk Sequence. The Tippecanoe Sequence here includes the Martinsburg Formation (Middle and Upper Ordovician) to a depth of 4530 ft and Middle Ordovician limestones ("Jacksonburg?" and/or Balmville and Black River?) to 4820, the level of the "Knox" unconformity. The underlying Sauk Sequence includes the Wappinger Group, from top downward: Copake, Rochdale, Halcyon Lake, Briarcliff, and Pine Plains formations. The gas show at a depth of 5400 ft is in the Halcyon Lake Formation, a calc-dolostone in which calcite has replaced dolomite.

The Finnegan boring penetrated Taconic, Tippecanoe, and Sauk Sequences and Precambrian basement at a depth of 7440 ft. Above the Taconic overthrust (encountered at depth of 2764 ft), the Taconic Sequence (slope and basin deposits of the same general age but of different facies from the Sauk Sequence) has been translocated from its eastern depositional site to its current western position above the shelf deposits of the Tippecanoe and Sauk Sequences (from top downward including: Beekmantown Group, Little Falls Formation, Galway Formation, and Potsdam Sandstone).

The Finnegan boring yielded three favorable petroleum-exploration indicators: (1) oil residues in a zone 410 ft thick (6430 to 6840 ft) in the Galway Formation (Upper Cambrian); (2) "relic porosity" in the range of 10 to 15%, in the sandstones and dolostones containing these petroleum residues [vs. 0.9 to 3.35% (average 2.09%) in comparable rocks lacking oil residues]; and (3) maturation levels of solid hydrocarbons are supermature (level of but not beyond thermogenic natural gas).

 

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91013©1992 AAPG Eastern Section Meeting, Champaign, Illinois, September 20-22, 1992 (2009)