--> ABSTRACT: Ames Hole Oklahoma: Impact-Formed Petroleum Reservoirs, by John F. McHone; #91019 (1996)

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Ames Hole Oklahoma: Impact-Formed Petroleum Reservoirs

John F. McHone

Ames Hole is a 16 km wide circular subsurface structure centered at 36°15^primenorth, 98°12^primewest in Major County, northern Oklahoma. An impact origin is confirmed by the presence of shock metamorphosed mineral grains and impact melt rocks recovered from drill cores and by a negative Bouger gravity anomaly over its center. Buried about three km deep, the structure is composed of shattered, central zone of uplifted Precambrian granite and Cambrian-Ordovician Arbuckle dolomite surrounded by two concentric rims of fractured and brecciated Arbuckle dolomite. The crater is filled with, and covered by, marine sediments of the middle Ordovician Oil Greek shale. The crater was formed during Ordovician time in a shallow sea on the northern shelf of the Anadarko Basin Restricted water circulation and anoxic conditions within the deep crater promoted precipitation of plankton-rich sediments. This Oil Greek shale became both the source and the sealing rocks for hydrocarbons which migrated into underlying porous target rocks fractured during the impact event. About one hundred wells within the area underlain by the Ames Hole astroblem presently produce nearly half of Oklahoma's oil and gas.

AAPG Search and Discover Article #91019©1996 AAPG Convention and Exhibition 19-22 May 1996, San Diego, California