--> Abstract: Stratigraphy and Depositional Systems of the Miocene Carneros Sandstone Member of the Temblor Formation, Southwest Elk Hills Area, California, by T. Nilsen and M. Milliken; #90911 (2000)

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Stratigraphy and Depositional Systems of the Miocene Carneros Sandstone Member of the Temblor Formation, Southwest Elk Hills Area, California

NILSEN, TOR, Consulting Geologist, San Carlos, CA; MARK MILLIKEN, Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing, Casper, WY

We have defined several aspects of the stratigraphy and depositional systems of the Saucesian Carneros Sandstone Member of the Temblor Formation in the SW part of the Elk Hills Oilfield, E and N of the adjacent Asphalto Oil Field, and centered in secs. 25Z and 30R. Logs from 25 wells and partially preserved conventional cores from 4 wells were used to prepare and interpret six stratigraphic cross sections. The productive Carneros zone consists in descending stratigraphic order of the First through Fourth Sandstone bodies. The upper two bodies form the principal reservoirs, appear to be in communication, and have been grouped together as the Upper Carneros zone. The two lower bodies, separated from the base of the upper zone by about 150 ft of shale, are locally productive and have been grouped together as the Lower Carneros zone.

The four sandstone bodies form separate and elongate point-sourced sand-rich lowstand submarine fans derived from the NW. The fans appear to have accumulated in a syndepositional syncline bounded on the SW by the Belgian anticline. The fan deposits have blocky log signatures and consist mostly of amalgamated beds of fine- to coarse-grained sandstone characterized by coarse-tail grading, dish structure, swirly lamination, crude parallel lamination, liquefaction features, sandstone dikes and sills, mudstone rip-up clasts, and current-ripple markings. The interbedded mudstone-dominated intervals contain thinly bedded distal basin-plain turbidites that are commonly highly deformed, suggesting abundant syndepositional seismic activity, and a number of apparently bentonitic marker beds, especially between the Upper and Lower Carneros zones. A widespread submarine landslide is present at the base of the First Carneros Sandstone. A locally angular unconformity removed the Media Shale and the First Carneros Sandstone prior to deposition of the basal siliceous shales of the overlying Monterey Formation.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90911©2000 AAPG Pacific Section and Western Region Society of Petroleum Engineers, Long Beach, California