Abstract: Sedimentology, Diagenesis, and Trapping Style, Chesterian Tar Springs Sandstone at Inman Field, Gallatin County, Illinois

David G. Morse

The Tar Springs Sandstone in southern Illinois is often overlooked as a pay, yet it can be a prolific producer. The Inman Field, discovered in 1940, produces from several cyclic Chesterian sandstones from structural-stratigraphic traps in the Wabash Valley Fault System of southeastern Illinois. The oil was sourced from the Devonian New Albany Shale and apparently migrated vertically along the Wabash Valley faults to its present location, thus charging many of the Chesterian and lower Pennsylvanian sands in the field. The Tar Springs Sandstone produces from stacked distributary channel sand reservoirs up to 125 feet thick which have cut up to 40 feet into laterally equivalent, non-reservoir, delta-fringe facies and the underlying Glen Dean Limestone. The reservoir sands ar well-sorted, fine- to medium-grained quartz arenites with less than 5% feldspar and chert. Quartz grains have quartz overgrowths. Feldspar grains are clouded in thin-section and show pronounced etching and dissolution in SEM. Diagenetic kaolinite and small amounts of illite and magnesium-rich chlorite occur in intergranular pores. Sparry, iron-rich dolomite or ankerite that fills pores in irregular millimeter-size patches, occupies up to 10% of the reservoir rock. Typical reservoir porosity ranges from 16 to 19 percent and permeability ranges from 60 to 700 md. By contrast

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90950©1996 AAPG GCAGS 46th Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas